The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago appointed Austan Goolsbee, an economist and former adviser to President Barack Obama, as its new president to replace Charles Evans, who retires in January.
Goolsbee, 53, who is currently a professor of economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, will start on Jan. 9, the Chicago Fed said in an emailed statement Thursday.
Evans will retire after 15 years helming the Chicago Fed and has through most of his tenure been among the US central bank's most dovish policymakers.
Goolsbee will hold a vote on policy decisions undertaken by the central bank's interest-rate setting Federal Open Market Committee in 2023 as it seeks to slow and eventually stop the aggressive monetary tightening campaign it launched this year.
In an Oct. 31 Bloomberg Radio interview, Goolsbee said a peak for the benchmark federal funds rate around 5% "kind of makes sense to me."
"They've got to get core inflation down to convince people, the markets, expectations, etcetera, that the high inflation is behind us," he said. "If they don't do that, the terminal rate's got to be higher than it is."
The Chicago Fed president has somewhat more influence on FOMC decisions because it holds a vote every other year, whereas presidents of most other reserve banks only rotate into the annual voting panel once every three years.
Goolsbee served as chair of Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers in 2010 and 2011.
