Top line
President Joe Biden on Monday appointed Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard as vice chairman of the central bank and tapped one of the Fed’s fiercest critics of climate change to oversee banking regulation and monetary policy amid post-pandemic economic recovery.
Lael Brainard, the only Democrat on the Fed’s Board of Governors, became an early favorite to dismiss … [+]
Important facts
After weeks of speculation about the appointments, Biden announced his election Monday morning to lead the Federal Reserve, electing Brainard as vice chairman and Powell as re-chairman for terms ending in early 2026.
If approved by the Senate, Brainard, the only Democrat on the Fed’s seven-member board, would succeed Richard Clarida, whose first term expires on January 31.
Brainard, 58, would be only the third woman to serve as Fed Vice Chair, ahead of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who was appointed by Obama and also served as Fed Chair from February 2014 to February 2018, and the late Alice Rivlin, from June 1996 to July 1999 she was deputy chairman.
With scrutiny of individual stock deals cast doubt on Clarida’s possible reappointment, Brainard’s bold stance on climate change has put many progressives at the helm of the Fed, especially when compared to Powell, who said the Fed only had one earlier this month “tight mandate”. “On climate change.
Last month, Brainard outlined an early draft of climate-related stress tests for large financial institutions, similar to the stress tests required after the Great Recession to assess banks’ capital needs.
While discussing the “first generation” of such tests, Brainard said it was “important” to begin systematically assessing financial institutions’ resilience to climate-related risk scenarios, citing the record high cost of US weather disasters over the past five years $ 630 billion.