President Donald Trump's temporary pick to join the Federal Reserve's board of governors is likely to advance ideas about overhauling the central back, which has been at odds with Trump over cutting interest rates.
Stephen Miran, who was chair of Trump's Council of Economic Advisers, was nominated by the president Thursday to join the board to replace Adriana Kugler, who abruptly announced her resignation last week. He will require Senate confirmation.
Miran's term will expire Jan. 31, but he is expected to wield considerable influence in U.S. monetary policy, even though his boldest ideas about reshaping the Fed would need congressional approval, Axios reported.
Last year, Miran and Dan Katz, a former senior adviser in the Treasury Department, published a paper through the Manhattan Institute arguing that the Fed succumbed to groupthink that resulted in policy errors, such as the 2021-2022 inflation surge, Axios reported.
They envisioned major structural changes that included shorter terms for Fed governors — eight years instead of 14 — and enabling the president to fire governors.
They argued for shifting greater power to presidents of the 12 reserve banks across the country by giving them all a permanent vote on monetary policy, according to Axios. They also wanted to change the way bank presidents are selected so that state governors would select the boards of directors of regional Fed banks, who in turn would select their presidents.
They also suggested making the Fed's budget subject to congressional appropriations, which would end the Fed's control over its finances, seen as a key factor in its independence. The Fed's multibillion-dollar renovation to its Washington, D.C., campus has been criticized by many, including Trump, for going over budget, although the Fed is self-financing the project.
Any of the proposed changes would have to be approved by Congress, which created the central bank with the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
Miran and Katz believe the Fed should have independence in making tactical monetary policy decisions but that elected leaders should have much more influence, leading to less centralized power within the Fed and more vibrant debates, according to Axios.
"You need healthy disagreement," Miran said last year on the "Macro Musings" podcast, according to Axios. "You need healthy arguments. ... You don't get that with bloc voting and lack of dissent.
"[We] want to introduce a system in which there is a lot more dissent, in which there is a lot more debate, open debate, about what policy should be."
The Bank of England, where the governor of the bank sometimes gets outvoted on policy, "is a much healthier intellectual environment, I think, to try and arrive at good policy," Miran added.
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.