Former Chicago Fed President Charles Evans was the best of the best. He was thoughtful, flexible and rarely made a misstep.
Those are proving to be tough shoes to fill. He was followed by former Obama insider Austan Goolsbee, who looked like a political appointee from the start. His first speech was yesterday but he's already being floated as Fed vice chair.
However that idea is becoming a long shot; first after Democrats pushed instead for a diverse candidate and now for a hit piece from Bloomberg that reveals that Goolsbee's wife is an executive at the search firm that recommended him for the top Chicago Fed job.
Included in the report is that both the Fed's Waller and Bowman abstained from supporting Goolsbee in a rare move. Both Waller and Bowman were Trump appointments, so it's a sign that politics were involved but it's a troubling reminder of the politicization-of-everything trend.
The Chicago Fed said that Goolsbee's wife had no role in the search that ultimately led to his hire and that it was disclosed to the Chicago Fed but it's still a bad look.
For what it's worth, Goolsbee has a PhD in economics from MIT and was a professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business so he's qualified but I'd suspect that he won't be Fed vice chair.
