FRANKFURT (Reuters – Germany’s new government is set to appoint a head of the Bundesbank. This central bank will be the next in line for power by the week’s end.

Three parties that are negotiating to form government, the Social Democrats Greens and Free Democrats will wrap up negotiations in the following days to decide on a position once all cabinet posts have been filled.

After 10 years of opposition, largely futile, to the European Central Bank’s easy money policies for euro-money, Jens Weidmann is now president of Bundesbank.

This is a five-year list of candidates who could take over the German central bank after Weidmann’s second term ends.

ISABEL SCHNABEL

Schnabel, who is also a member the European Central Bank Executive Board, would be able to make the switch from the Bundesbank unheard of.

Schnabel broke the mold of German resistance to negative interest rates, bond purchases, and bond purchases in her two-year tenure as an ECB member. She has also defended the ECB against critics from her home country.

Recent comments by her included a hawkish statement that inflation may be higher then the ECB expects.

JOACHIM NAGEL

Nagel is a Social Democrat. After 17 years of working at the Bundesbank, he rose up the ranks to become a Board Member before stepping down.

He was the German central bank’s chief market and technology officer and did not comment regularly on monetary policy.

He serves as deputy head for the Bank for International Settlements’ banking section. After a stint of four years at KfW, he was promoted to this position in 2020.

He has a degree from the University of Economics.

JAKOB VON WEIZSÄCKER

Weizsäcker has been the chief economist of the German Ministry of Finance under Olaf Scholz, who is now the leading candidate to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor.

He served as a European Parliament Member for Scholz’s Social Democrats from 2014 to 2019, and was also a member on the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.

An aristocratic relative, he is respected by the German center-right as a pro-European economic economist.

JOERG KUKIES

Kukies serves as Olaf Scholz’s right hand man and is Germany’s vice finance minister.

A graduate of the University of Chicago in finance, he was employed for Goldman Sachs for 17 years (NYSE:), before joining government in 2018.

Scholz was critical of Scholz’s role in the Wirecard scam. He sent Scholz nine-pages memo, in which Scholz dismissed concerns over the payment company and laid out a plan for saving it using funds from KfW.

VOLKER WIELAND

Wieland has been a member of the German Council of Economic Experts for many years, and advises the German government.

He was a frequent critic of loose monetary policies that could lead to financial bubbles. But he defended ECB’s bond buying programme during a German constitutional court hearing defending its stimulus programmes in 2019.

Wieland recently told Handelsblatt https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/streitgespraech-zur-inflation-wieland-fordert-geldpolitische-wende-der-ezb-allgemeines-preisniveau-steigt-fratzscher-so-einfach-ist-es-nicht/27822744.html?ticket=ST-13108143-wRWBHSIYj3xIxJqMeYbz-cas01.example.org the ECB needed a plan to exit from its low-rate policy as the current inflation surge was “more than just a short-term rash”.

Wieland is a professor of monetary economics at Frankfurt University.

MARCEL FRATZSCHER

Fratzscher is considered the most “dovish”, having endorsed the ECB’s extremely loose monetary policies and called for greater fiscal spending in Germany.

Handelsblatt was informed that the current rate of inflation is not to be worried about and that the ECB should refrain from raising rates.

He is a former economist at the European Central Bank and teaches macroeconomics at Berlin’s Humboldt University.

CLAUDIA BUCH

Buch is the Bundesbank’s Vice-President since 2014. He previously served a two year stint as an Economic Expert on the German Council of Economic Experts.

Weidmann, a 55-year-old former professor at university, is accompanied by Weidmann during meetings of the ECB’s Governing Council.

She has, however, avoided the public monetary policy debate and focuses instead on financial stability issues.

JENS ULBRICH

After five years as the general secretary of German Council of Economic Experts for five years, the Bundesbank’s chief economist is now working at the German central bank.

This 52-year-old economist uses Twitter (NYSE.) to express his views, but not publicly. His main focus is explaining the ECB’s decision and commenting about the economic outlook.

LARS FED

Feld is a specialist in economic and fiscal policies.

As a symbol of Germany’s economic wisdom, he calls for higher interest rates to avoid a property bubble.

He has also defended asset purchases by the ECB before Germany’s Constitution Court and backed eurozone central bank’s response against the coronavirus epidemic.

Feld, a former chair of Germany’s Council of Economic Experts (German Council of Economic Experts), teaches constitutional and economics at Freiburg University. Feld has been appointed head of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna.