(Bloomberg View) -- We can forgive Fed Chair Janet Yellen if she is feeling a bit blue.
It hurts to be passed over when, even by Donald Trump's admission, you have done an excellent job. This week's labor market reading showed another month of solid job growth with the unemployment rate dipping to 4.1 percent. (Admittedly, one big caveat is the continued absence of any real wage growth.)
All may not be entirely lost. Her influence can live on, and not just in a well-performing economy and a stock market Trump loves to boast about. In her interview with Trump, Yellen offered the president some names for vice chair, Bloomberg's Craig Torres and Jennifer Jacobs reported. The office of vice chair has been vacant since Stanley Fischer left last month.
Wouldn't it be delicious to see that list! We can only speculate, but it's not a stretch to imagine San Francisco Fed President John Williams was on it. That would be a great choice, and not just because Williams keeps things interesting. (He has peppered remarks with references to his favorite bands: The Clash, Green Day and Led Zeppelin. His exit from an interview in Bloomberg's San Francisco office in February was accompanied by a quick chat about Joe Strummer and the labor market. Working for the Clampdown.)
Williams is one of the most respected macro-economists around the Federal Open Market Committee table. (The Fed district bank presidents get to vote on interest rates on a rotating system, unlike Fed governors who vote each time.) Unlike Powell, he has a Ph.D. in economics. He was also Yellen's director of research when she ran the San Francisco Fed before Barack Obama tapped her for vice chair in 2010.
This isn't a knock on Powell for not being an academic economist by training. Paul Volcker didn't have a Ph.D. either, and he is regarded as a giant in the annals of economic policy. Powell, too, is clever -- clever enough to realize the value of having a Ph.D. economist right behind him.
Williams and Powell have voted together on every interest rate decision since they have served together. Vice chairs typically get a few special assignments as well, like smoothing over relations between the Fed board in Washington and the district banks in the field. Williams would be perfect for that.
The trick is whether Trump, or the GOP, can handle picking someone close to someone appointed by Obama. Depending whose version you rely on, Yellen was still in the running until relatively late in the process. Williams also served in a staff-level position at the Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration. Perhaps for vice chair, they won't care. And maybe it was long enough ago to be overlooked.
What would Joe Strummer have made of that? Not such a crazy casbah jive.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Daniel Moss writes and edits articles on economics for Bloomberg View. Previously he was executive editor of Bloomberg News for global economics, and has led teams in Asia, Europe and North America.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Philip Gray at philipgray@bloomberg.net.
For more columns from Bloomberg View, visit http://www.bloomberg.com/view.
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