As Paul Krugman argues today, the inaction of the Federal Reserve in the face of our economic problems is a bit puzzling because Ben Bernanke is closely associated with the view that aggressive action is possible in this kind of situation. Consequently, it’s not really clear why so little is being done.

At least one possibility, however, is that Bernanke’s own views aren’t the same as those of the median member of the Fed’s Open Market Committee. If that’s true, then good news may be on the way since on Thursday the Senate Banking Committee is finally going to hold hearings on Barack Obama’s nominees for the Fed’s Board of Governors. It’s been frustrating to me to watch the Senate slow-walk this, and equally frustrating to see the administration make no effort to get them to do otherwise. Even more frustrating, there’s been very little scrutiny of what Sarah Bloom Raskin and Peter Diamond actually think about this subject (Janet Yellen is more of a known quantity). My hope is that their confirmation could be the impetus for the change we need, but at this point that’s really just a hope.

Reuters is reporting that San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President Janet Yellen will be tapped to replace Donald Kohn as Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. She’s an excellent person and will do an excellent job, but as Brad DeLong observes this move doesn’t really change anything on the FOMC in a serious way since she’s already the President of the San Francisco Fed.

Indeed, depending on who her successor is there, the net impact could even be negative. Which is why it’s important that the administration move on filling the other two vacancies. The Reuters piece, however, contains the first reporting I’ve seen that the administration is in fact vetting people for these jobs and says Sarah Bloom Raskin, Peter Diamond, Jeremy Stein, David Scharfstein, and Laurence Ball. I don’t know anything about any of those people except for Peter Diamond, and the work of his that I know (Social Security stuff about two clicks right of Dean Baker) doesn’t seem terribly relevant to what the Fed does.