WASHINGTON, March 12 (UPI) -- A White House official Friday named three leading candidates to fill the three empty board seats at the U.S. Federal Reserve.
The New York Times identified the source as a "senior administration official" who said Janet Yellen, president of the Federal Reserve bank of San Francisco, was the top pick who would likely be asked to fill the position of vice chairwoman at the Fed.
The official also named Peter Diamond, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is considered an expert on Social Security and taxation, as "under consideration" for another seat on the board. The third candidate named was Sara Bloom Raskin, the Maryland commissioner of financial regulation.
The name dropping may be a way for the Obama administration to get an early sense of how Congress would react if the candidates were officially nominated, the Times said.
President Barack Obama has already seen one of its Fed board nominees, Daniel Tarullo, take a seat on the seven-member board. Tarullo joined the board in January 2009.
