US President Joe Biden has said he plans to nominate former Ripple advisor Michael Barr to be the Federal Reserve’s next vice chair of supervision
Biden To Nominate Michael Barr As Fed Supervisor
President Joe Biden will appoint Michael Barr, a former Treasury Department official, to be the Federal Reserve’s top bank regulator.
Barr, who was previously mentioned as a possible candidate to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, worked in the Treasury Department under President Barack Obama, where he helped develop the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulatory framework.
Barr later worked as an advisor for Ripple, a distributed ledger technology company. He is currently on the faculty at the University of Michigan.
The nomination would elevate the leading financial laws author to the position of perhaps the most powerful U.S. bank regulator: vice-chair of supervision at the Federal Reserve.
“He was instrumental in the passage of Dodd-Frank, to ensure a future financial crisis would not create devastating economic hardship for working families,” Biden said in a statement Friday morning accompanying the formal White House announcement.
“He understands that this job is not a partisan one, but one that plays a critical role in regulating our nation’s financial institutions to ensure Americans are treated fairly and to protect the stability of our economy,” Biden added.
Michael Barr Worked Under Barrack Obama
During the Obama administration, Barr worked as an assistant Treasury secretary for financial institutions, where he helped design the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. That law, which was enacted in the aftermath of the 2008-2009 financial crisis, was one of the most comprehensive overhauls of financial regulation in US history.
Dodd-Frank created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Fed’s vice chair for supervision, among other provisions aimed at protecting the economy from future calamity.
The president also emphasized that when Barr was previously confirmed by the Senate, he received bipartisan support from both Democrats and Republicans.
That could be an oblique acknowledgment of the administration’s difficulties in advancing some of its nominees for financial regulatory positions in a Senate split 50-50.
Sarah Bloom Raskin, Biden’s first choice for the Fed’s bank regulator, resigned last month. She dropped out of consideration after West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, the Senate’s most conservative Democrat, said he would not support her nomination because of her views on climate change and energy policy ideas.