Austan Goolsbee under consideration for Fed vice chair job: WSJ

Chicago Fed President and economics professor Austan Goolsbee is being considered by the White House to become the next vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

The macroeconomist, who holds the Robert P. Gwinn professorship at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, was appointed as president of the Chicago Fed in December.

If installed in the new role, Goolsbee would play a key role in helping to set the agenda for the central bank’s rate-setting meetings. At the Federal Reserve’s Jan. 31-Feb. 1 meeting, he voted to raise interest rates by a quarter percentage point.

Between 2010 and 2011 he chaired the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers and was a member of the Chicago Board of Education between 2018 and 2019.

Goolsbee has held a number of other key public policy advisory roles, including at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Panel of Economic Advisers to the Congressional Budget Office, the US Census Advisory Commission, and as a special consultant for internet policy to the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice.

He received his undergraduate and master’s degrees from Yale University and his PhD from MIT, all in economics. 

News of his potential nomination came after President Biden announced he will appoint current Fed Vice Chair Lael Brainard as director of the National Economic Council. She is set to leave central bank next week.