Washington insiders were momentarily shocked last week when it appeared that President Obama had withdrawn his nomination of former Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Chief Thomas Hoenig for vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
The White House sent a statement Tuesday that suggested Hoenig had had his nomination paperwork sent to the Senate for the job, but then it was withdrawn from consideration altogether. Some websites even posted the news, concluding Hoenig was now out of the running.
The truth was something quite different and altogether more mundane. It turns out the White House just made an error in Hoenig's paperwork and was seeking to correct it.
Hoenig's initial nomination Oct. 20 was actually for two positions. Hoenig would succeed Martin Gruenberg, now acting FDIC chairman and nominee for chairman, as the No. 2, but the six-year FDIC board seat Hoenig would fill is actually that of Thomas Curry.
Yet for reasons too complicated to go into here, Hoenig's original nomination for Curry's seat was for the wrong length of time. So the White House statement last week was a correction, simultaneously withdrawing the original paperwork and sending up new paperwork detailing Hoenig's nominated six-year term.
In other words, Hoenig is still the nominee.
It's hard to blame the White House for the mix-up. Adding complications to the entire process was the fact that Curry is a nominee for a different position on the FDIC board: Comptroller of the Currency. If your head isn't hurting yet, you may be bionic.
