Fed’s Plosser plans to retire

Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser, who votes on policy this year, will retire after eight years in which he became a consistent critic of the central bank’s unprecedented easing.

Plosser, 66, will step down on March 1, the reserve bank said Monday in a statement. The bank’s Chairman James Nevels, founder of The Swarthmore Group, and Deputy Chairman Michael Angelakis, chief financial officer of Comcast Corp., will lead a search committee to find a successor.

Plosser has warned since the Fed cut the main rate to near zero in December 2008 that too much accommodation risks an inflationary surge. He cast a dissenting vote at the last two Federal Open Market Committee meetings. Inflation has been tame, with a main price gauge remaining below the central bank’s 2 percent objective for more than two years.

“It could be a loss for that more hawkish group,” said Dean Croushore, an economics professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia and a visiting scholar at the Philadelphia Fed, where he was a vice president and economist from 1989 to 2003. “He’s a pretty powerful proponent of that sort of view, and people respect him for that.” (Bloomberg)