Carlyle Group To Get a Man on the Federal Reserve Board

It's all about insiders when it comes to the Federal Reserve.

A White House statement says President Obama will nominate two former U.S. Treasury Department officials for the Federal Reserve Board.

Obama's picks are Jerome Powell, an attorney who was a Treasury undersecretary for former President George H.W. Bush, and Jeremy Stein, a Harvard University economist who has advised the current administration.

David Rubinstein is popping champagne. Powell from 1997 through 2005, was a partner at The Carlyle Group, where he founded and led the Industrial Group within the U.S. Buyout Fund.

In addition to Carlyle, in the years since leaving the Treasury Powell worked at Bankers Trust Co.; the Global Environment Fund, a private-equity firm; and his own investment company. In other words a complete Wall Street-DC Corridor insider.

Stein is currently a professor at Harvard. From February to July 2009, Stein worked in the Obama administration as a senior adviser to Treasury Secretary and as a staff member of the National Economic Council.

According to the Crimson, Stein first joined Harvard as an assistant professor of finance at Harvard Business School from 1987 to 1990. From 1990 to 2000, he was a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, first as an associate professor of finance and eventually as the J.C. Penney Professor of Management.

Stein graduated summa cum laude from Princeton in 1983 with a bachelor’s in economics, earning his Ph.D. from MIT in 1986. Thus, another MIT econ PhD joins the hierarchy of the Fed. This will be the fifth.

The nominees must still be confirmed by the Senate.

The salary of Fed chairman Ben Bernanke is $199,700. The annual salary of the other Board members is $179,700.

Is M.I.T. Secretly Running the Fed?

EPJ's Bob English writes:

It's official: Fed led by quartet of MIT grads.

File under curious. I wonder if they all had a similar mentor whose legacy is now driving the Fed.

The Federal Reserve has just announced that Steven B. Kamin will officially become the director of Fed’s chief international economic advisory division.

Kamin became acting director in August following the departure of Nathan Sheets, who led the office after almost four years and became the global head of international economics at Citigroup Inc. Kamin’s appointment is effective Dec. 11, the Fed said in a statement today.

As director of the Division of International Finance, Kamin briefs Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and other officials on economic developments outside the U.S. and represents the Fed at international meetings.

Kamin holds a bachelor's degree from the University of California at Berkeley and received a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

With this appointment, all three of Bernanke’s top staff advisers are M.I.T grads.

William English (no relation to Bob)is the director of the Division of Monetary Affairs, He also received his PhD from MIT,as did David Wilcox director of the Division of Research and Statistics.

Bernanke also received his PhD from M.I.T..