President Donald Trump is set to nominate Federal Reserve governor Jerome Powell as the Fed's next chairman, according to a new report.
Trump notified Powell on Tuesday and plans to announce the nomination Thursday before he begins his trip to Asia the following day, the Wall Street Journal reports. Sources also tell the Journal that Trump had decided on Powell on Saturday.
Trump had previously said he expects people to be impressed by his choice to head the central bank, but the administration has kept quiet about who it would be.
"It will be a person who hopefully will do a fantastic job," Trump said Friday. "I think everybody will be very impressed."
Powell has not commented but in June he indicated he believed the economy was approaching its "assigned goals," which may justify raising interest rates.
"The economy is as close to our assigned goals as it has been for many years," Powell said in June, and if growth continues, "I would view it as appropriate to continue to gradually raise rates."
Powell is a Republican who wants economic regulation to be used sparingly.
"More regulation is not the best answer to every problem," Powell said in a speech last month.
Krishna Guha, vice chairman at Evercore ISI and a former New York Fed official, said Powell is a good candidate for Trump's goals.
"To some extent he offers Trump the best of both worlds," Guha told the Journal. "You get broadly speaking continuity of [current Fed chairwoman Janet] Yellen's careful and relatively dovish approach to monetary policy but with somebody who is a card-carrying Republican and who is significantly more inclined to revisit some of the postcrisis regulations."