Wall Street wants Yellen, not Summers, as next Fed chief
Knew it 
I knew the Summers knows something that we don't and that it was the reason he spoke the way he did about QE
Obama says narrowed Fed choices, to announce in months: NY Times
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama has narrowed his choices to succeed Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to "some extraordinary candidates" and will announce his pick "over the next several months," he said in an interview with the New York Times.
In the interview, released on Saturday, Obama said he wanted a Fed leader who would focus on growing the economy and not just work abstractly to keep inflation in check and markets stable, the Times reported.
Obama Says He Has Narrowed Down Decision on Next Fed Chairman
President Barack Obama said his nominee for Federal Reserve chairman will be someone who embraces the central bank’s dual mandate to promote price stability and maximum employment, and he has narrowed his choice “to some extraordinarily qualified candidates.”
“I think you can anticipate that over the next several months, an announcement will be made,” Obama said in an interview with the New York Times (NYT) on July 24, according to a transcript published yesterday on the newspaper’s Website. Obama said he has yet to make a final decision and will announce a choice within “several months.”
Obama isn’t expected to nominate a successor to the current chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, until at least September, an administration official said July 26. Obama wants a chairman who understands the Fed’s dual mandate, the president said in the interview at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois.
“And when unemployment is still too high, and long-term unemployment is still too high, and there’s still weak demand in a lot of industries, I want a Fed chairman that can step back and look at that objectively and say, ‘Let’s make sure that we’re growing the economy, but let’s also keep an eye on inflation,” Obama said.
“If the markets start frothing up, let’s make sure we’re not creating new bubbles,’” he said.
Bernanke, whose second four-year term ends on Jan. 31, hasn’t indicated whether he would seek or accept a third term. Last month, Obama said the Fed chairman has stayed in the post “longer than he wanted.”
Obama was one of the leakers of Summers at Fed speculation, columnist says
President Barack Obama was one of the officials who leaked that he was on the verge of naming Larry Summers to succeed Ben Bernanke as chair of the Federal Reserve, according to a column Monday by progressive columnist Robert Kuttner.
According to Kuttner, in a follow-up email, a reliable source told him the president mentioned Summers on background to a small group of the press.
The carefully orchestrated campaign went awry because of a massive backlash from Senate Democrats, Kuttner said.
At the daily press briefing Monday, White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest declined to comment on Obama’s deliberations in picking a Fed chair.
Kuttner, who has long decried the influence of Robert Rubin on the Democratic Party, sees the former Treasury secretary as the puppet-master at the center of the race for Fed chairman.
In a blog on the Huffington Post, Kuttner said Rubin and his allies would never accept Yelllen as Fed chief because she is too independent and not friendly enough to Wall Street.
So with Summers’ candidacy damaged, Rubin will look for another viable candidate.
“If Rubin, Summers and their allies run true to form, they will be frantically looking for a plausible woman candidate who is closer to Wall Street than Yellen,” Kuttner said.
“It’s increasingly clear that the game here is to block Yellen,” Kuttner said.
Obama strongly defends Summers
President Barack Obama defended Larry Summers inside a closed-door meeting with House Democrats, according to several news reports on Wednesday. Several members of Congress said Obama was adamant in his defense of Summers, according to the report on Bloomberg News. The White House has said that Obama won't name a replacement for Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke until the fall. Obama credited Summers for healing the nation's economy from collapse, according to a report on Politico. The race for Fed chairman is said to be down to Summers and Fed Vice Chair Janet Yellen
Summers looks a little slippery 
so should slide into the job very well
but my votes for the lady
or keep the Bernank... as better the devil you know
The Race For The (Fed) Throne - An Update On The Nominees
Confused by all the trial balloons, meandering daily Op-Eds (most of which written by novice journalists with even more bizarre agendas), and "paddy power" market updates? Then here is Scotiabank's Guy Haselmann with his latest rundown on just where we stand in the race for the next Fed chairman.
From Guy Haselmann of Scotiabank
Comment on Fed Chair Nominee
- For the moment, the list of potential candidates for the nomination of the next Fed Chair appears to be limited to three names: Yellen, Summers, and Kohn. I will offer a quick comment on each candidate.
- The White House was probably surprised by the extent of the reaction to the floating of the Larry Summers trial balloon. It appears the White House is now aggressively trying to make its case to Dems and to markets. Lobbying efforts have been fierce on both sides. There has been an extraordinary number of articles detailing the pros and cons of the leading contenders. This seems justified given its enormous importance to markets.
- Investors seem to still believe (with about 80% or so certainties) that Yellen will be nominated. I believe the chances of Obama nominating her is infinitesimally small primarily because his ideology stands radically opposed to what current Fed policy represents. QE lifts prices of risk assets, making rich people richer; after all, the wealthiest people own the vast majority of risk assets. At the same time, ZIRP acts as a wealth transfer from the poor to the rich.
- Obama is aggressively outspoken about the growing wealth divide and income inequalities. The last thing he wants to do is further exacerbate them and fuel benefits to the “millionaires, billionaires, fat cats, and jet-setters”. In addition, it is widely believed that QE policy enables fiscal stalemate. Therefore, Obama likely wants and needs a different direction. This will require a Chairman who is an expert crisis manager who can navigate the inevitable fallout that will inevitably result from a change in Fed policy or from the removal of the “Fed put”.
- The Dem’s major opposition to Summers is because they believe he is soft on regulation, and therefore too friendly to Wall Street. This is ironic because Wall Street has no better friend than the QE and extraordinary easy money policies championed by Yellen.
- Don Kohn would be an ideal candidate and great compromise. He spent his entire 40 year career in the Federal Reserve System. He was well liked by Fed colleagues, politicians, and financial market contacts. During his career, he wanted desperately to be the Fed Chairman.
- However, today he may not want to come out of retirement, especially for ‘this’ position. The job now is materially different than in the past due to rates being stuck at the zero lower bound for the fifth year in a row. There are other policy constraints as well.
- Furthermore, the job would begin during the peak in risks of the greatest monetary policy experiment in modern finance. Lastly, superstar - yet mortal - Don Kohn is 70 years old.
- I still believe Summers will get the nod and that Obama’s chosen candidate will NOT get held up by the Dems regardless of who it is. More importantly, I believe the markets will have an adverse reaction to any non-Yellen candidate. Markets should price in a quicker end to QE and faster pace of rate normalization. Therefore, the market is likely underpricing the risks and embedded optionality of the announcement of the chosen nominee.
- “In my house I’m the boss, my wife is just the decision maker.” – Woody Allen
I will repeat what I already told : Summers knows something that we don't (something that is not told publicly). The boss will decide (or already gave decided). Wall street may wish whatever they want
Do you trust Larry Summers or Janet Yellen to police Wall Street?
The strangest part of the increasingly bitter shadow campaign for chairman of the Federal Reserve is that the contest is not really about monetary policy. It’s about financial regulation.
The two leading candidates for the job are Janet Yellen, the current vice chairman of the Fed, and Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary and an economics adviser to President Obama. When it comes to monetary policy, they don’t differ drastically. Both support the Fed policy to maintain low interest rates and continue asset purchases — no premature “tapering” — until unemployment falls significantly.
Yet, the race between them has generated extraordinary political heat.News that the White House is leaning toward Summers rocked Capitol Hill, leading almost half of Senate Democrats to sign a letter in support of Yellen. This is, to put it lightly, a surprise. I doubt 10 Senate Democrats knew who Yellen was two months ago.
Their letter is really about Summers, even though his name is never mentioned. Liberal senators hold incredibly strong opinions on the controversial economist. They blame Summers for the financial deregulation of the 1990s, and even if they could forgive that, they resent his opposition in 2010 to the Volcker rule, a proposal in the Dodd-Frank reforms to restrict banks from using deposits to make proprietary trades. That he has taken a bunch of money from Wall Street in the interim doesn’t make them any happier.
The most powerful financial regulator in the world
These disputes are directly relevant to the job. The chairman of the Federal Reserve is by far the single most powerful financial regulator in the world. That was true when Chairman Ben Bernanke took the job in 2006, and it’s truer today, as the Dodd-Frank reforms need to be implemented and, in many cases, defined.
As assistant secretary for financial institutions from 2009 to 2010, Michael Barr was the Obama administration’s point person on financial reform. He knows better than most how much power the law handed the next Fed chairman. “They have an extraordinarily central role to play in the development of the new financial regulation architecture post Dodd-Frank and then in the development of global capital standards and rules on resolution and foreign currency and derivatives markets and a central role after that in the supervision of firms,” Barr said.
Is that enough central roles for you?
In addition to the elements of the law on which the Fed takes the lead regulatory responsibility, there are many others on which it works in concert with other regulators. Even in those cases, the Fed more or less takes the lead, too. “What the Fed has is this enormous intellectual machinery,” said former Rep. Barney Frank, one of the drafters of the law. “The head of Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the comptroller of the currency can’t remotely match the Fed in resources, and this is a place where data and analysis are real currency.”
This is why the prospect of a Summers chairmanship gives financial reformers heartburn. They think he can’t be trusted to regulate Wall Street. But like many — though not all — of his former White House colleagues, Barr thinks reform-minded critics don’t give Summers nearly enough credit.
“I wouldn’t have gone to work for Larry if he didn’t believe in financial regulation,” Barr said. “He cares about this stuff. I know he’d implement Dodd-Frank. And I think his impatience, which some people don’t like, would serve us well in this implementation phase.”
Whoever "wins" will be the wrong one for the job. When politicians are deciding who is the best for some job, they are going to chose the "most bendable" one not "the best for the job" one.
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Wall Street overwhelmingly believes President Obama will and should pick Janet Yellen to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, according to a survey.
Preliminary results of the CNBC Fed Survey for July show 70 percent of the 40 participants who responded believe Obama will pick Yellen, currently, the Fed's vice chair, to replace current Chairman Ben Bernanke, whose term is up in January.
Just 25 percent believe it will be the former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
Yellen also beats Summers when CNBC asks participants who the president should nominate, with 50 percent choosing Yellen and 12.5 percent saying he should reappoint Bernanke. Even write-in candidate John Taylor, the Stanford University economist, beats out Summers on who the president should nominate.
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