Trump announces nominees to fill vacant seats at Fed board

Clarida will serve as the vice chairman of the Fed for a four-year term, according to a statement released by the White House on Monday, Xinhua news agency reported.

Clarida is also nominated as one of the seven members of the Fed's board of governors.

Bowman is nominated to become a Fed governor who should have community banking experience as required by the Congress.

Both nominations will be subject to approval of the Congress.

The vice chair job, which was vacant since Stanley Fischer stepped down in October last year, was considered as one of the most influential positions in the central bank alongside the chair and the president of the New York Fed.

Clarida is now an economic professor at the Columbia University, as well as managing director and global strategic adviser at Pacific Investment Management Co.

As a Ph.d economist, he also had deep experience in US government and served as assistant secretary for economic policy at the US Treasury from 2002 to 2003, who provided economic advices to the Treasury Secretary.

With extensive experiences in academic research on monetary policy and macroeconomics, Clarida is widely expected to provide critical support for the Fed chair Jerome Powell who has no education background on economics on monetary decisions and solutions to possible future recession.

In his previous speeches and interviews, Clarida was largely supportive of policy decisions by former Fed chair Janet Yellen, whose gradual approach to tighten monetary policy was also inherited by current Fed chair Powell.

Bowman is now the Kansas State Bank Commissioner, the chief regulator for local banks and non-depository lenders.

Before the local bank regulator job, Bowman served as the vice president of the Farmers and Drovers Bank in Kansas, a local bank owned by her family.

Clarida and Bowman were the fourth and fifth nominees announced by Trump to fill the Fed board's vacant seats, following chair Powell, vice chairman for banking supervision Randal Quarles, and Carnegie Mellon University professor Marvin Goodfriend whose nomination to be a Fed governor still awaits Congressional approval.