Lloyd Blankfein on Gary Cohn: 'No one's perfect'

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said “Gary is very, very capable,” and that “there is nobody who has a better sense of markets." (Reuters)

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein gave a less-than full-throated endorsement when asked on Wednesday whether Gary Cohn would make a good chairman of the Federal Reserve.

“No one’s perfect, but he’s the best I know,” Blankfein said of Cohn, his former No. 2 at Goldman Sachs, during a talk with journalists on Wednesday at the bank’s headquarters in New York.

“He’d be a different kind of person” than Fed Chair Yellen, Blankfein added. “He’s not an academic. I don’t know that he reads a lot of policy papers, let alone write them.”

Blankfein’s lukewarm comments came weeks after Trump himself floated Cohn, who is currently director of the National Economic Council, for the role atop the US central bank in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

It’s unclear if Cohn will ever get the job, however. Trump has reportedly cooled on the ex-Goldman banker after Cohn criticized the president’s response to white supremacists gathering in Charlottesville, Va. last month. Still, Trump has wavered before installing advisers in top job before, as in the case of ex-communications manager Anthony Scaramucci.

The top job at the Fed is set to open up in late January when Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s term expires.

On the positive side, Blankfein said “Gary is very, very capable,” and that “there is nobody who has a better sense of markets, or the consequence that decisions will have, on people’s behavior who act and are guided by market forces.”

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