[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Page 16229]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   NOMINATION OF FREDERIC S. MISHKIN

  Mr. BUNNING. Mr. President, I wish to speak briefly about the 
nomination of Dr. Frederic Mishkin to be a Federal Reserve Governor and 
why I voted against him.
  I do not think Professor Mishkin is the right choice for the Federal 
Reserve. I am not convinced that he will be an independent voice.
  I met with Professor Mishkin a few weeks ago and found Professor 
Mishkin to be a pleasant and intelligent man. I do not question his 
integrity or his qualifications for the job. He has spent his entire 
career studying and writing about monetary policy and economics. And 
his passion is evident.
  To me, the question is not about Professor Mishkin's qualifications 
but about the kind of Fed we need. I do not hold Professor Mishkin's 
long friendship with Chairman Bernanke against him, nor do I think he 
will have problems speaking his mind to the chairman when they 
disagree. My concern is that those disagreements will be few and far 
between, and that the chairman hand picked him for that reason.
  More than that, I am afraid the Fed has too many people with the same 
background. Many Fed members have spent a great deal of time studying 
central bank actions, but too few have experience dealing with the 
real-world consequences of those actions. Even Fed Chairman Ben 
Bernanke recently agreed that having people with different backgrounds 
on the Fed is healthy, and he stated his support for the next nominee 
to come from the financial services industry.
  However, Professor Mishkin will only continue the trend toward an 
ivory-tower, academic Fed. Because of that, I voted ``no''.

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