This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Saturday, November 11th, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The big changes coming to the Federal Reserve include a new chairman and a new head of the New York Fed.

Tate Lacey, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, describes the changes and what the Fed should be

assuming Senate confirmation that Jay Powell will move from being a governor on the board

to being the chair of the Federal Reserve Board.

All right, so what do we know about his voting record as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors?

Well, since he came to the Board, which was initially in 2012, he was then reappointed

to his own 14-year term in 2014. He's voted on the side of Chair

Yellen and with the consensus of the board each and every time. However,

there's not much to be taken out of that.

A governor has not dissented at an FOMC meeting since 2005.

Dissents are almost exclusively done now by voting regional bank presidents.

Okay, so basically he has done what was expected of him this entire time he's been on the board.

He's agreed with his colleagues. That's true. However, it needs to be said. You could

look at somebody like a former president of the Dallas Fed Richard Richard Fisher, who was a very outspoken

member when he was on the FOMC, he cautions against drawing too much out of Powell's

voting records saying that the fact that he has voted with the consensus

should not be interpreted to mean that he was not injecting his own unique ideas into the

discussions behind the scenes.

So help us understand here a little bit.

The meeting minutes that are maintained at these meetings of the Fed Board, the public doesn't get to see what is in those minutes

...