Atlanta Fed president leaving in February

In a speech Monday he said there should be a “serious discussion of a policy rate increase” when the Fed meets next week. “In Shanghai last week one Fed governor said ‘we must raise rates, ‘ another Fed president said ‘no this is the wrong time.’ It’s impossible to discern, we’ve got to get focused, pick a plan”, businessman Peter Kiernan told Varney.

The Atlanta Fed said Dennis Lockhart will step down as its president on February 28. The Atlanta Fed is working with executive search firm Spencer Stuart on the process and said there is no timetable for an appointment.

Lockhart faced mandatory retirement under Fed rules, which require bank presidents who are older than 65 to step down after a decade on the job.

There are 12 Federal Reserve banks around the country and it is the presidents of those banks, along with five Fed governors, who set the nation’s monetary policy.

Atlanta Fed board chairman Thomas Fanning, who is chief executive officer of Southern Co, will lead a search committee of non-bank directors to find a replacement for Lockhart, the bank said in a statement Tuesday.

The Atlanta Fed manages the central bank’s automated clearing house transaction network. But his comments have been more hawkish this year.

Critics also have raised concerns about the fact that the three newest regional bank presidents all worked in some capacity for investment bank Goldman Sachs. He will serve in his post until February 28. Lockhart began his banking career at Citicorp, now Citigroup, where he held various global and domestic positions from 1971 to 1988. Lockhart is not a current voting member of the FOMC, but the Atlanta Fed is slated to take over a voting chair on the committee in 2017, heightening the importance of the search for his successor. The Fed’s regional bank presidents are chosen by the respective bank’s boards of directors.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta serves the Sixth Federal Reserve District, which encompasses Alabama, Florida and Georgia and portions of Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.