President Joe Biden will nominate Sarah Bloom Raskin to be top banking regulator for the Federal Reserve, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Thursday (Jan. 13).
Raskin is a former top Treasury Department official. If confirmed, she would be the most influential overseer for the American banking system.
Biden is also planning to nominate economists for two other Fed board seats, including Lisa Cook, a professor of economics and international relations with Michigan State University, and Philip Jefferson, a professor and administrator with Davidson College in North Carolina.
These three selections will complete Biden’s version of the Fed board. He also decided to offer Jerome Powell a second term, along with an offer for Fed governor for Lael Brainard to be Fed vice chairwoman.
Provided that all of the nominees get approval, Raskin and Brainard would succeed top officials selected by previous President Donald Trump, and Biden’s officials would hold five of the seven board seats, with four now being held by women.
Through nominating Cook and Jefferson, Biden would also be able to achieve a promise to add more diversity to the Fed board. In its history, the Fed has only had three black board members, all of whom were men.
By nominating Raskin, Biden could also appeal more to progressive Democrats’ sensibilities, some of whom objected to renominating Powell, a Republican who Trump nominated first.
PYMNTS writes that Powell, for the second time in two years, has said there’s a report on digital currency coming.
Read more: A Year Later, Fed Chair Again Promises Crypto, CBDC Report ‘Soon’
The report is expected to go into the Fed’s theories on central bank digital currencies, and was meant to be released last summer.
However, Powell said on Sept. 22 that the report will be out “soon,” and he added in late November that it was delayed because they were “trying to get it right.”
On Jan. 11, Powell said the report was ready to go and would be published in the next few weeks.
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