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There was, though. Burns had been quarreling with the Administration almost from the beginning, criticizing last year's $50 tax rebate scheme, which was later dropped, and various White House proposals for tax reform. He also had been driving up interest rates to a point that Charles Schultze, Carter's chief economic adviser, felt was dangerous to the nation's economic recovery. Schultze, annoyed by the Fed chairman's lecturing to the White House, once lamented: "Burns talks about the independence of the Federal Reserve. What about the independence of the Executive Branch?"
Presumably, Bill Miller will get along better with Jimmy Carter, the man who hired him. A workaholic, lawyer and team player who helped Royal Little build Textron into a profitable, wide-ranging conglomerate, Miller is disciplined yet humorous, and pleasant to deal with. He refuses to compare himself with Burns. "Each of us has our own style," says he. "I've built up my personal way of doing things over a long time. I'm sure they'll be different from anyone's."
Miller's appointment almost surely will not mean any sweeping change in Federal Reserve policy, at least until he overcomes his newness. A Board chairman has only one of the twelve votes on the Fed's critical Open Market Committee: its decisions on the buying and selling of Government securities largely determine the rate of money-supply growth and the level of interest rates. The chairman eventually does rule, but by force of personality, which takes time to establish.
In philosophy, however, there appear to be distinct though hard-to-measure differences between the incoming and outgoing chairmen. Burns saw inflation as Public Enemy No. 1. Miller gives equal priority to reducing unemployment and has often said that price stability and full employment are not incompatible goals.
Further, Miller has advocated some ideas that Burns never would countenance. In a signed article in Business Week in 1974, he came out for a form of credit allocation: mandatory higher interest rates on, and higher bank reserves behind, loans for low-priority purposes; lower rates on, and smaller reserves behind, high-priority loans, such as those to finance housing or small business. Conditions, of course, were different then, and Miller was not talking last week about whether he feels the same way now. He interrupted a Bahamas vacation to accept Carter's selection, made some remarks about the importance of a strong dollar that sounded staunchly conservative, and then flew back to the Bahamas.
How was he chosen? Up until several weeks ago, Carter was considering keeping Burns on. The President finally was persuaded by Vice President Walter Mondale and Treasury Secretary W. Michael Blumenthal that the Fed needed new leadership. About seven weeks ago, a candidate search team headed by Mondale was set up. The group knew almost from the outset that its ideal candidate would be a progressive businessman, preferably a Democrat (which Miller is). A list of a dozen names was drawn up; eventually it was pared to five. On it were Du Pont Chairman Irving Shapiro, General Electric Chairman Reginald Jones, Brookings Institution Chief Bruce MacLaury and Bank of America President A.W. Clausen, in addition to Miller. Washington rumor has it that Shapiro, Jones and Clausen turned down the job.