Hearings for Fed’s Powell, Brainard likely in January

US Senate Banking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown expects to wait until January to hold hearings on President Joe Biden’s nominees to the top two Federal Reserve positions.

Biden last month nominated Fed Chair Jerome Powell to a second four-year term as head of the US central bank and picked Fed Governor Lael Brainard for vice chair at the central bank. Nominees must be approved by Brown’s panel before being considered by the full Senate. Powell’s current term ends in early February.

The hearings could come at a key moment in monetary policy, as the Fed pivots from the extraordinary accommodative policies it put in place to battle the recession triggered by the coronavirus pandemic to a gradually tighter policy stance.

The Fed will hold its next policy meeting next week. Powell and policymakers are expected to discuss accelerating the wind-down of the central bank’s bond-buying program, ending it by March or April.

That would pave the way for interest rate hikes soon after to tamp down inflation that’s running at more than twice the Fed’s 2% goal.

Neither Powell nor Brainard won unanimous approval the first time they went through the nomination processes for their current jobs, in 2012 and 2014 respectively, and neither is expected to do so this time.