No president has ever had a chance to rewrite the course of the Federal Reserve as completely, and as quickly, as President Donald Trump.

When Trump picks a new head of the Federal Reserve—a move expected to happen on Thursday—it will be just the midpoint of his reshaping of the nation’s most important financial body. He’s likely to fill three more critical positions at the Fed: the vice chair, and two spots on the Fed Board of Governors. Combined with Governor Randy Quarles, who was confirmed by the Senate in October, Trump has a chance to nominate five of seven Fed governors by early next year.

But just what Trump will do with that power remains unclear.

The Fed Board of Governors, along with five presidents from regional Fed banks, is the ultimate arbiter of monetary policy. Those decisions can ripple across the economy, making mortgages more expensive and deterring companies from building a new factory or investing in a new technology. So Trump’s moves have immense consequences for the broader economy. But his position on monetary policy has been tough to nail down, as he has both praised the current low interest rates and spoken favorably about the gold standard, creating huge uncertainty about what the Fed will look like and how it will act once Trump is finished reshaping it.

On the campaign trail, for instance, Trump accused current Fed Chair Janet Yellen, without evidence, of being “highly political” and said she had refused to raise interest rates “because Obama told her not to.” But just last week, Trump called her “very impressive,” leading a flurry of coverage about whether he might appoint her to a second term.

Amid the curiosity over just who will be the new Fed chair, and what the choice will say about Trump’s economic views, it’s underappreciated just how much power Trump has, how quickly, over what’s supposed to be a highly independent agency. Just six of Barack Obama’s Fed nominees were confirmed in his eight years in office. That number was eight for George W. Bush. Trump could have five in his first year or two alone.

“That was never envisioned by the founders of the Fed,” said Alan Blinder, a Princeton economist who previously served as vice chair of the Fed, “and nothing like this has ever happened in practice.”

Fed governors have 14-year terms—only judges serve for longer—and they’re carefully staggered so that one governorship expires every two years. That’s supposed to ensure that each presidential term, the president can nominate two governors, insulating the central bank from political pressures, so that no administration would have too much influence over monetary policy.

But since its inception in 1935, this system has almost never worked. Governors have almost never stuck around for the fully 14 years, and over the past few decades, they’ve spent fewer and fewer years in office. The average Fed governor appointed in the 1950s served more than 10 years. Since 2000, that has dropped to just five. The last person to stay for a full 14 years was Alan Greenspan, nominated in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan.

“It’s been accelerating since about the end of the Clinton era,” said Peter Conti-Brown, a business professor at University of Pennsylvania who has written a book on Fed governance.

Why are Fed governors leaving sooner than their predecessors? The simplest answer, experts said, is money. As members of the most powerful financial institutions they’re sought-after by hedge funds, banks, and other financial institutions where they can make far more money than they did on the board. Fed board members make around $200,000 each year, far less than they can make at a private firm—and even less than the presidents of the regional Federal Reserve banks.

“How much the person can earn in the private market is rising and rising and rising,” said Blinder, who said that his time on the Fed board in the mid-1990s hurt his finances. “I don’t want to plead poverty and I’m not poor today, but my net worth was dwindling every year—and unless you are a very rich person, you can’t let that go on forever.”

As Fed governor positions have become open more frequently, the White House and Congress have been slow to move nominations, with the exception of the Fed chair and vice chair, which are still priorities. But the inattention to other governors have left positions vacant for years at a time, leaving the Fed short-staffed. Former President Barack Obama, for instance, did not nominate someone to replace Frederic Mishkin, who resigned in August 2008, until 2010. And even after the president has nominated a person to a governorship, Congress has been slow to confirm the nominee. Recently, partisan infighting has begun to infect the process as well. After Republicans took control of the Senate in 2014, they refused to confirm Obama’s two nominees for open Fed governor spots.

In that sense, Senate Banking Committee Chair Richard Shelby is partially the reason why Trump has such an opportunity to remake the central bank today: He refused to schedule a committee vote on two open spots that Trump now gets to fill. But it’s also just a matter of luck. Two governors, including Vice Chair Stanley Fischer, have already resigned this year. And unless Trump choose to keep Yellen as Fed chair, she’s expected to resign her seat on the Fed board as well, even though her term doesn’t expire until 2024. Altogether, that’s five potential openings.

“It’s a bit of a fluke, but probably a predictable fluke given the fact that the governors increasingly spend less and less of their terms in office,” said Joseph Gagnon, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who has worked at the Fed off and on for the past 30 years.

So far, Trump, like his predecessors, has been slow to fill the empty seats. The lone exception is Quarles, whom Trump nominated in July to fill not just a governorship but also to become the Fed’s first vice chair of supervision, a powerful position created under the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory law that oversees the Fed’s regulatory responsibilities. (Daniel Tarullo had informally filled the role before he resigned in April.)

But Quarles’ nomination also shows another problem with the current system. The 14-year clock doesn’t reset when a governor resigns, so multiple people can hold one “term.” In fact, Quarles is the fourth person to hold this seat during the single 14-year governorship—and the term ends at the end of January. In other words, Quarles’ appointment expires just a few months after he was confirmed. “That’s ridiculous,” Blinder said.

Trump has already nominated Quarles for the next 14-year term that begins on February 1, 2018, but Congress has yet to take up that nomination. Conti-Brown argued that Quarles’ short term is not just an extra burden for Congress but also is a threat to the Fed’s independence. If Quarles does not act as Trump wants, he worried, Trump could just withdraw his nomination. In other words, until he’s confirmed for another term, Quarles is effectively serving at the pleasure of the president.

“This is a terrible error,” Conti-Brown said. The Trump administration could have instead nominated Quarles for one of the other open governorships, which don’t expire for multiple years. Conti-Brown said there’s no legal explanation for why Trump chose to fill the short-term opening while leaving the long-term seats unfilled. Asked why the White House did not nominate Quarles for a different open Fed governorship, Lindsay Walters, deputy White House press secretary, said in a statement, “We want to see Randy confirmed for his 14-year term as soon as possible. It is up to the Senate to act.”

One simple way to fix these problems with Fed governance is to raise the pay for Fed governors, not necessarily to be competitive with private sector salaries but to be at least competitive with the presidents of regional Fed banks, who typically earn $300,000 to $400,000 annually. Conti-Brown also suggested giving each governor his or her own dedicated staff, instead of the current system of shared staff.

Another idea mentioned by both Conti-Brown and Blinder: Each new governor’s term should start fresh, so that their term never expires soon after they’re confirmed. Blinder, whose term was up just 18 months after he was confirmed, said that he would’ve stuck around longer if his term had started fresh. “I was pretty sure Bill Clinton would reappoint me but I didn’t want to ask him to use one of the 14 year terms, when I thought I wouldn’t have lasted longer than a few years,” he said.

All of those reforms will require legislative action, which is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Beyond legislation, Blinder said, Congress and the White House just need to be more attentive to these roles, sending nominations to Capitol Hill faster and then acting on them in a timely manner. Said Conti-Brown, “In our enthusiasm around the horse race around the Fed chair, we shouldn’t forget about the importance of the Fed governors."

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