The White House appears to be considering an Obama-era economic adviser and former Federal Reserve economist to fill vacant seats on the Federal Reserve System’s board of governors in 2022.
According to a Wednesday Washington Post report citing people familiar with the matter, US President Joe Biden is still considering Duke University law professor Sarah Bloom Raskin to fill one of the vacancies at the group of seven governors from the Federal Reserve this year, plus economists Lisa Cook and Philip Jefferson. Cook teaches at Michigan State University and has previously served as a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama, while Jefferson was a research economist for the Federal Reserve Board.
The report comes as the White House officially announced Tuesday that it had sent the nominations of Jerome Powell and Lael Brainard to the Senate to await confirmation before serving as the next Fed chairman and vice chairman, respectively. Powell has held the presidency since 2018, while Brainard has served on the board since 2014. Senate confirmation would allow Powell and Brainard to serve as two of the Fed’s top leaders until 2026, while Raskin, Cook and Jefferson would likely serve 14-year terms, should their names come up.
The vacancies at the Federal Reserve opening to Biden’s appointments are the result of the resignation of board member Randal Quarles, which will take effect at the end of December 2021, while current Vice Chairman Richard Clarida is expected to leaves in January 2022. A significant change in the composition of one of the main financial regulators in the United States could have an impact on the way the government looks at cryptocurrencies. Although Biden has not officially announced his elections to fill the vacant seats, he said in November that he planned to nominate substitutes with the goal of “improve diversity in the composition of the Board.”
The leadership of other government bodies responsible for regulating digital assets in the United States, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, will likely undergo a reorganization in 2022. SEC Commissioner Elad Roisman is expected to leave the agency at the end of January and Allison Lee’s term to expire in June.
In the CFTC there are only two commissioners out of the usual five. In the same announcement made yesterday by the White House, Biden sent the names of Kristin Johnson and Christy Goldsmith Romero to the Senate to fill two of the CFTC commissioner positions. However, with the expected departure of Commissioner Dawn Stump in February, the President of the United States will likely have more opportunities to select financial experts who could have an impact on cryptocurrency-related policy.
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