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Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the governing board of U.S. central bank, on Wednesday narrowly won Senate confirmation for a new 14-year term.
The vote to confirm Cook was 52-47. Sen. Mike Rounds, a Republican from South Dakota, was the only GOP senator to vote in favor of her confirmation.
Fed board seats have fixed, 14-year terms and governors can fill some or all of the tenure. Last year, it took a tiebreaking vote from Vice President Kamala Harris for Cook to win confirmation to a Fed board seat with a term set to end early in 2024.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, the Ohio Democrat who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, said he had faith in Cook’s judgement “to set monetary policy that grows our economy from the middle out and the bottom up.”
“Last year, her character was attacked and her credentials were questioned. It was an unfair, underhanded attack on an eminently qualified woman of color,” Brown said in a statement.
Prior to joining the Fed, Cook was a professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University.
She served as a senior economist on the Council of Economic Advisors in the Obama White House.
Since joining the Fed in May 2022, Cook has supported Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s strategy to rapidly raise the central bank’s policy interest rate to put downward pressure on inflation.
In recent months, Fed officials have been grappling with the question of whether the benchmark rate, now in a range of 5.25%-5.5%, is high enough that they can stop raising rates and wait to see if inflation continues to subside.
In her speeches, Cook has expressed support for the Fed’s 2% annual inflation target.
Some economists want the central bank to raise that target, fearing that pushing for a lower inflation rate will ultimately weaken the economy and increase unemployment.
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