President Bush’s nominations of Randall Kroszner and Kevin Warsh to terms on the Federal Reserve board of governors won Senate approval on Friday.
Both men were approved by voice vote as was Edward Lazear, nominated by Bush to be the new chairman of the three-member White House Council of Economic Advisers.
The selections of Kroszner, an economics professor at the University of Chicago, and Warsh, an economic assistant to Bush at the White House, will bring the Fed’s seven-member board up to full strength.
The two join Ben Bernanke, who took over on Feb. 1 as the new Fed chairman, succeeding Alan Greenspan, as the most recent additions to the Fed board.
The three will participate in their first interest-rate setting meeting on March 28 when the seven Fed board members in Washington will join with the Fed’s 12 regional bank presidents for a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, the panel that meets eight times a year to set interest rates.
Kroszner, 43, was a professor in the University of Chicago’s school of business. He had served as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers during Bush’s first term.
Warsh, 35, had served as a special assistant to the president for economic policy, specializing in domestic finance, capital markets and banking issues. Before joining the administration, Warsh had served as executive director and vice president for mergers and acquisitions in the investment banking division of Morgan Stanley.
Lazear, a business professor at Stanford University, will take the Council of Economic Advisers post held by Bernanke before he succeeded Greenspan at the Fed.