Senate confirms Lael Brainard as Federal Reserve vice chair

By Matt Egan, CNN Business

The Senate voted on Tuesday to confirm Lael Brainard as the Federal Reserve’s vice chair, approving a key Biden nominee empowered to help lead the central bank’s fight against high inflation.

Brainard, currently a governor at the Fed, received some bipartisan support, with multiple Republicans supporting her nomination to a four-year term. The vote was 52-43.

The confirmation makes Brainard the third woman to serve as the Fed’s vice chair, following Alice Rivlin in the late 1990s and Janet Yellen, who in 2014 became the first woman to run the Fed and last year became the first female Treasury secretary.

Some progressives had hoped President Joe Biden would nominate Brainard, a former official in the Clinton and Obama White Houses, for the top job at the Fed. Instead, Biden opted to keep Jerome Powell at the helm and elevate Brainard to the central bank’s No. 2 job.

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