Larry Kudlow on Fed Chair nominee Ben Bernanke:

CEA chair and former Fed governor Ben Bernanke is about to be nominated to succeed Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. In my view it is a good choice. Though Mr. Bernanke is not a hardcore advocate of the price rule, he does favor an inflation target, which is the second best option. Noteworthy is the fact that in recent speeches he has emphasized the slow and steady 2 percent zone of core inflation and inflation less energy. So he is not as militant as some of the crazed Fed presidents. Bernanke does watch financial market indicators such as the inflation-adjusted Treasury bond and the TIPS spread.

Bernanke will also support an extension of Bush’s tax cuts for capital gains and dividends, and he has told me in the past that raising tax rates would only harm the economy. He is widely respected in the economics profession as a former chairman of the Princeton Economics Department. Thank heavens that Fed board member Donald Kohn, who is a demand-sider and a Phillips Curver, did not get the nod. (I’ll be tracking this development closely on my blog, Kudlow’s Money Politic$)

In his speech moments ago, Bernanke seemed to suggest that he’d continue with the slow rise of interest rates as a way to curb inflation (he spoke of his aim to maintain the “continuity” of the Greenspan model).

Overall, the street should be happy with this pick.  Bernanke has come out publicly for extension of the Bush tax cuts (a cut in tax rates moreso than tax “cuts”)—which is likely to cause some concern among Dems—but I don’t suspect he’ll receive too much in the way of an organized resistance.

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update:  Jim Bunning says no; Jack Kemp, yes (via Neil Cavuto)