- President Joe Biden reportedly plans to nominate climate-change critic and former Federal Reserve Gov. Sarah Bloom Raskin as the central bank’s vice chair for supervision Friday, while also unveiling two other key Fed picks as well.
- Multiple media quoted unnamed sources late Thursday as saying Biden will tap Raskin to take over for Randal Quarles, who recently departed from the central bank’s top regulatory role.
- Raskin served as a Fed governor from 2010 to 2014 before moving on to become former President Barack Obama’s deputy treasury secretary. She’s also the wife of U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)
- Published reports also indicate that the president will name Michigan State University economics professor Lisa Cook and Davidson College dean Philip Jefferson as Fed governors.
- Cook currently serves as a Michigan State economics and international-relations professor and formerly worked as a senior economist on Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors. If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, she would reportedly become the first black female to serve on the Fed’s board.
- Jefferson is a former Fed economist who currently serves as dean of faculty and academic-affairs vice president at North Carolina’s Davidson College. He will reportedly represent only the fourth black man in history to serve on the central bank’s board if confirmed for the job.
- However, all three nominees – whose candidacies had been rumored for some time -- could face opposition during their confirmation votes before the Senate, where Democrats and Republicans each hold 50 votes. Vice President Kamala Harris can provide a 51st Democratic vote to break ties in party-line disagreements, but only if all Democrats approve of something that all Republicans oppose.
- Some GOP lawmakers have already come out against Raskin’s long-expected nomination, based in part on her statements arguing that financial regulators should use their powers to fight climate change.
- For instance, Raskin wrote in a recent op-ed piece that “while none of [America’s] regulatory agencies was specifically designed to mitigate the risks of climate-related events, each has a mandate broad enough to encompass these risks within the scope of the instruments already given to it by Congress. Accordingly, all U.S. regulators can – and should – be looking at their existing powers and considering how they might be brought to bear on efforts to mitigate climate risk.”
- Such positions have drawn criticism from the likes of Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.), who said in a statement that Raskin “has specifically called for the Fed to pressure banks to choke off credit to traditional energy companies and to exclude those employers from any Fed emergency lending facilities. I have serious concerns that she would abuse the Fed’s narrow statutory mandates on monetary policy and banking supervision to have the central bank actively engaged in capital allocation.”
- As for Biden’s other expected nominees, Toomey said that “I will closely examine whether Ms. Cook and Mr. Jefferson have the necessary experience, judgment and policy views to serve as Fed governors.”
Some Fed watchers see Biden’s expected appointments as a move to appease his party’s progressive wing in the wake of the president’s decision to nominate current Fed Chair Jerome Powell to a second term of office. Powell, whom Republican former President Donald Trump named Fed chief in 2017, appeared before a Senate committee this week for a confirmation hearing.