Economic guru Ron Insana predicts President Donald Trump’s choice for the next Federal Reserve leader “may be the single most important decision of his still-young presidency.”
But the author of four books on Wall Street has the “dump” button for his stock portfolio at the ready, just in case.
“I am operating on one principle here: ‘If it ain't Yellen, I'll be sellin'!’” Insana wrote for CNBC.
Insana says he likes many of the 10 candidates to take the job when current Fed Chair Janet Yellen's term expires early next year, including Yellen herself.
“Both Yellen and her predecessor at the Fed, Ben Bernanke, have proven that the Fed needs to be nimble, open-minded and extremely deliberative in assessing current conditions and weighing the risks and rewards of rate craft,” Insana wrote.
“They both have argued that no strict, simple model can capture the myriad variables, both at home and abroad, that can shock the economy, for good or for ill. They have been proven correct in that regard,” the CNBC and MSNBC contributor wrote.
“Yellen has also been an advocate for maintaining at least some of the post-crisis regulations that have bolstered bank capital and liquidity while also keeping banks out of business lines that helped precipitate the last, devastating crisis,” Insana wrote.
“I hope, as I did with President Obama and Chairman Bernanke, that this president prefers continuity to chaos,” by retaining Yellen, Insana wrote.
“Without a steady, experienced and battle-tested veteran at the head of the Fed, chaos in interest rate policy might just be the biggest risk the markets will face in the months and years ahead.”
For his part, Trump is “some time away” from making a decision about who should be chair of the Federal Reserve, White House chief of staff John Kelly said on Thursday.
“There’s still ongoing ... interviews,” Kelly told reporters. “All of the people that have been in to interview have been really first round draft choices, and we have more to come,” he said, Reuters reported.
(Newsmax wires services contributed to this report).
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