Stop Me Before I Vote Again

There are three vacant board seats to fill at the Fed, including the vice chairman's, now held by veteran stooge and lickspittle Donny Kohn, pictured above washing down... washing down... oh never mind, I'll spare Father Smiff's blushes.

Three seats out of 7 -- that's a big chunk of the central bank vote. Okay, so you got 5 regional chairman that get to vote too, every time, but... maybe the right sorta folks could start to turn that Wall Street shithouse around -- maybe openly and clearly dissent from the banker line.

Yikes, baby -- just think -- get some easy-money types in there and....

But alas -- who's said to be the boys Obama has sent out with the lamp of truth in search of these new spirits? You guessed it: Tim and Larry. Delightful, no?

Barking crow Jimmy Kwak over at Baseline Scenario sez he's perplexed by this:

"So now the question is, who will fill Kohn’s seat — and the other two empty seats on the Board of Governors? The Board is supposed to have seven members, and they matter because they have seven of the twelve seats on the Open Market Committee, which sets the fed funds rate. Business Week says that the search is being led by Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, and that the likely goal is to find people to back Bernanke...This confuses me for a few reasons"

Here's Mr Kwak's undoubtedly bull's-eye query: "Does this mean that Obama is going to appoint three centrists who follow the [recent] central banking orthodoxy of putting inflation control over economic growth, and who oppose tighter regulation of banks?" Here's the answer:

YES!

But here's why I read Jimmy every day:

"I think the deification of the Fed chair in the past two decades has been a decidedly bad thing."