President Biden on Friday announced a slate of three nominees to the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors that could significantly increase its diversity and push banking regulation in a more progressive direction.
The nominees include Sarah Bloom Raskin, a former Fed and Treasury official and the wife of Rep. Jamie Raskin, Maryland Democrat. Raskin would take over from Randal Quarles as the Fed’s vice chair for supervision, the primary watchdog of Wall Street lenders.
Also on Biden’s list is Lisa Cook, an economics professor at Michigan State University. She would become the first Black woman to serve on the board. Philip Jefferson is the third nominee. He is an economist and vice president for academic affairs at Davidson College.
Cook and Jefferson would be just the fourth and fifth Black governors in the Fed's 108-year history. In addition, for the first time, a majority of the seven-member board would consist of female appointees.
Together with Fed Chair Jerome Powell and board member Lael Brainard, “this group will bring much-needed expertise, judgment, and leadership to the Federal Reserve while at the same time bringing a diversity of thought and perspective never seen before on the Board of Governors,” Biden said.
According to the Associated Press, the three nominees “would join the Fed at a particularly challenging time in which the central bank will undertake the delicate task of raising its benchmark interest rate to try to curb high inflation, without undercutting the recovery from the pandemic recession.”
The Hill said Fed experts do not expect the picks to dramatically shift the course of the bank’s monetary policy, but they “could heavily influence the Fed’s pending revamp of anti-redlining rules and its approach to climate-related financial risks.”
Raskin is best known of the three, having been on the Fed’s board from 2010 to 2014. “Raskin is likely to draw fire from critics for her progressive views on climate change and the oil and gas industry,” the AP said.
But Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, said, "In the important role of vice chair for supervision, she brings a commitment to protect the American people that has been sorely missing from the Fed board for years."
