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As of now, Barr is assigned to investigate supervisory failures that occurred under his watch featuring a bank that catered in particular to the crypto and fintech industries which Barr was so active in immediately prior to revolving back into government. Barr is a walking conflict of interest. His central role in the investigation is damning

His defense of HAMP is that his hands were tied, but he seemingly went out of his way to handcuff himself.

Insider-trading can’t keep Powell’s right-hand man from becoming CNBC’s new favorite expert.

The conflict of interest here would be self-evident.

Most of Barr’s holdings are in firms backed by Nyca Partners, a fintech-focused venture capital fund built by Wall Street and Silicon Valley veterans which Barr has advised for years. 

Over a decade after the financial crisis, few would still dispute that the revolving door between financial regulators and the financial industry helped pave the way for economic disaster. In the years preceding the crash, regulators who came from the country’s largest banks and planned to promptly return to them, removed regulatory restraints and turned a blind eye to the predictably dangerous effects (see, e.g. Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan). In the next administration, different regulators drawn from the same well let the fraudsters off the hook and left the working people who had fallen victim to them out to dry.  

“Michael Barr was too close to fintech and cryptocurrency schemers to be the Comptroller of the Currency, and he is still too close to them to be Vice Chair for Supervision.”

After a stream of stories throughout the pandemic revealed seemingly rampant congressional insider trading, laughable disclosure practices, and nonexistent enforcement, Congress appears finally to be feeling the pressure to clean up its act. In recent weeks, lawmakers have introduced a flurry of new bills to limit conflicts of interest and help restore public trust in our governing institutions.

As they begin to forge a piece of consensus legislation, they should consider that members of Congress were not the only political leaders to violate public trust throughout the pandemic period. The trading scandals within the Federal Reserve system, for example, revealed material ethical deficiencies that have yet to be satisfactorily addressed. It’s important to recognize that these deficiencies are not unique to the Federal Reserve and that they represent an ongoing threat to public trust in other powerful corners of the executive branch as well. To rebuild that trust in government, lawmakers must learn the lessons of the Federal Reserve scandals and develop fixes for these deficiencies there and elsewhere.

Biden is still married to reviving a long-lost vision of bipartisanship. Never mind that the same Republicans he’s desperate to welcome into the fold literally did not applaud the ideal of bipartisanship he is pushing.

Quaadman’s letter is full of technical language and oozes elite respectability, but underneath all of the jargon, it’s just a bunch of Wall Street banks scared that someone might hold them to account.

Federal Reserve officials’ conduct has cast doubt on the institution’s credibility to provide these answers. It is, therefore, critical that members of the media and of Congress seek independent answers. 

In the fall of 2021, a series of trading scandals rocked the Federal Reserve and cast doubt on every aspect of its ethics program, from disclosure practices and vetting standards to enforcement mechanisms. The message to the public was clear: under chairman Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve’s sole executive officer and the official to whom the institution’s staff reports, ethical conduct was not a priority. After initially brushing off the seriousness of these revelations, Powell seemingly sought to change that impression by instituting new ethics standards and launching an Inspector General’s investigation.

“We are extremely disappointed to see Biden renominate Jerome Powell as Chair of the Federal Reserve Board. Biden’s endorsement of Powell’s deregulatory agenda will greatly harm American families. Biden has an ambitious and urgent agenda on climate, financial stability, and addressing racial and economic inequality. Powell as Chair of the Federal Reserve will make it more difficult for Biden to ultimately be a successful president. Today is a win for the conventional wisdom and Establishment and a defeat for the planet and Joe Biden’s ultimate legacy.”