Bush to Tap Minn. Banker for Fed
The Associated Press
Jul 10 2001 4:26PM
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush will nominate Mark Olson, the former head of a Minnesota bank and a past president of the American Bankers Association, as a member of the Federal Reserve Board, a government official said Tuesday.
The announcement from the White House was expected to come later.
Olson, who headed a community bank in Fergus Falls, Minn., served as president of the American Bankers Association from 1986 to 1987.
Olson would be the second Bush selection for the seven-member Fed board with direct experience in banking. Last month, the president announced he was nominating Susan Bies, a top official of a Tennessee bank, for another vacancy on the board.
While the normal Fed board term is for 14 years, Bush will have the chance to fill five of the seven positions in the first year of his presidency. Two of those positions have been vacant for more than two years.
Private economists, however, said that as long as Alan Greenspan remains Fed chairman, the central bank's decisions on interest rate policies will bear his strong influence, given the success he has had managing the economy during his 14 years as chairman.
Olson was at one time president of Security State Bank in Minnesota. More recently, he had been a top aide on banking matters to former Sen. Rod Grams, R-Minn.
Sung Won Sohn, chief economist at Wells Fargo Bank in Minneapolis, said Olson would bring the practical experience of running a bank to the Fed, which has regulatory control over the nation's large bank holding companies.
``The fact that he worked for a community bank rather than a large bank is probably a plus. Community banks have been complaining for years about over-regulation. Mark will represent their interests well,'' Sohn said.
In March, Bush announced that he would nominate Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Roger Ferguson for another term. Ferguson, the first black to serve in the central bank's No. 2 job, was originally appointed by President Clinton, who also renominated him to a full 14-year term last year.
However, then-Senate Banking Committee Chairman Phil Gramm, R-Texas, refused to act on the Ferguson nomination or another Clinton Fed nomination, arguing that the spots with such long terms should not be filled by a lame-duck president.
In June, Bush announced his nomination of Bies, who would be the only woman on the Fed board. Since 1980, Bies has worked for Memphis-headquartered First Tennessee National Corp., a large regional bank holding company with 200 branches in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas.
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