National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett indicated President Donald Trump's decision on who should succeed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is months away.
“I would expect that this would run out for another few months before the president decides,” Hassett said in a CNBC interview Monday. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is “running a thorough search process. There are a number of really excellent candidates being interviewed by him and the president.”
Powell's term as Fed chair is set to expire in May.
Hassett also said that he thought “the presentation that Jay Powell made up at Jackson Hole was sound,” referring to the Fed chair's Friday speech. Powell said “the baseline outlook and the shifting balance of risks may warrant adjusting our policy stance.”
“I think that the Fed's a little bit late to the game,” the NEC chief said. He said the annualized rate of price increases over the past six months is 1.9%, “so inflation has gone way down.”
Separately, Hassett said it's possible that the federal government will take further equity stakes in private-sector companies, after Trump's recent deal on a nearly 10% share of Intel Corp. He described the Intel transaction as “like a down payment on a sovereign wealth fund, which many, many countries have.”
“The president has made it clear all the way back to the campaign that he thinks that in the end, it would be great if the US could start to build up a sovereign wealth fund,” Hassett said. “And so I'm sure that at some point there'll be more transactions, if not in this industry, in other industries.”
Pressed on whether corporate leaders ought to expect the possibility of the government effectively buying some kind of equity stake, Hassett said, “It's possible.”
“In the past the federal government has been giving money away lickety split to companies — and the taxpayers have received nothing in return,” he said. He also said that the government has no plans to run private companies, and that stakes wouldn't have voting rights.
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