Federal Reserve

The organizations call for the next Chair, Vice Chair, and Vice Chair for Supervision to prioritize protecting against recessions, combating systemic racism, fighting climate change, and ensuring full employment.

The following points are taken from Revolving Door Project’s extensive research document on Jerome Powell’s private-sector record, which includes work at union-busting and fossil fuel-investing firms.

Disproportionately Black cities were the ones most in need of a non-profit-seeking investment alternative during the COVID-19 crisis. The Fed’s program to fill that need failed to deliver.

During his time at the Carlyle Group, the firm repeatedly engaged in union-busting layoffs, climate-damaging fossil fuel investment projects, and more. 

For the sake of American workers, racial justice, financial security, and the climate, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell should not be renominated for a second term.

The Biden administration’s favorite pundit deploys willful ignorance in order to chide the left.

The argument in favor of Powell ignores the simple math.

In the last few months, Revolving Door Project has been quite public about our opposition to renominating Jerome Powell for a second term as Chair of the Federal Reserve.

Interagency cooperation is essential to ensuring the Biden administration adequately manages the risks associated with the growth of cryptocurrency, including illicit finance, tax evasion, investor and customer protection, shadow banking, and financial stability.

Just as a president shouldn’t only be judged on whether or not they started a war, Fed chairs shouldn’t only be judged on whether they raised or lowered interest rates. That’s their most salient power, but they have other, more complex ways of affecting our lives. Financial regulation is one of the most important of these, and it’s one on which current Fed chairman Jerome Powell has failed badly.

Over the course of the next eight months, Biden will have the opportunity to reshape the Federal Reserve Board of Governors with nominations for up to four of its seven seats, including the positions of Vice Chair of Supervision, Vice Chair, and Chair (listed in the order they will become vacant). In choosing nominees for these posts, it will be essential that Biden consider the full weight of the Federal Reserve’s immense power and select individuals who are ready and willing to deploy every ounce of it to advance the public interest.

The Fed is more than monetary policy, and we need to think of the Fed chair’s whole role. Since democratic control of the Fed is exercised primarily through presidential appointments, we must consider Powell’s record holistically. It’s not a good one.