Resignation of Mishkin leaves Fed board ranks thin

WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve Gov. Frederic Mishkin said Wednesday that he would resign from the central bank at the end of August to return to his Columbia University teaching post.

His surprise announcement leaves an already short-staffed central bank even more depleted in the midst of the most challenging economy in decades.

With Mishkin's departure, the seven-member Fed board of governors could be pared down to four. The Democratic-controlled Senate for nearly a year has refused to vote on President Bush's nominees to fill several open Fed slots. If the Senate delay continues, whoever is elected president in November will have a chance to quickly shape the policymaking arm of the central bank through new appointments.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is likely to push for faster congressional action, given the central bank's staggering responsibilities as it struggles to keep up with turmoil in financial markets, draft tighter rules for mortgage and credit card lending and step up oversight of the banking industry.

"The workload just gets immense," says Lyle Gramley, a former Fed governor who is now with Stanford Washington Research Group. "There's going to be a lot of pressure" for the Senate to act.

The Fed board needs only a simple majority vote in most instances. But five votes are called for in some sensitive cases, such as lending to entities that aren't traditional banks — which the Fed has been forced to do this year as credit has dried up in financial markets. Still, even here, existing law includes ways the Fed can act with fewer than five members.

Mishkin backed rate cuts

Mishkin, 57, is a highly regarded economist and textbook author who is a close ally and former research partner of Bernanke.

He has been a force behind the central bank's recent policy of aggressive interest rate cuts to shield the economy from the fallout of the housing and financial market meltdowns. Other Fed officials have been more involved in financial market operations.

Mishkin, who has been on the Fed since 2006, is an expert on globalization. Along with Bernanke, he supports setting a Fed target for acceptable inflation as a way to make central bank policy more predictable.