A New Fed Chair

Initial reports suggest that Bush is going to make an announcement this afternoon nominating Ben Bernanke to be the next Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

This is actually a pretty good choice, I think. (Full disclosure: he was one of my professors in grad school, so I accept the possibility that I might be biased on this.) Bernanke is a superb macroeconomist, a nice guy, and, despite his current position as chair of the CEA (a position that has historically been filled by highly respected academics with only minor partisan leanings), he is not a sharply partisan or ideological person.

Credit one to Bush for making a sensible pick in this case.

Kash


UPDATE: I was going to add a bit more commentary about this good choice on Bush's part, but Mark Thoma has beaten me to it. So all I'll add is: "What Mark said."