Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., slammed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell in an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press” Sunday, saying he “has failed” in his duties and shouldn’t be in his role.<\/p>\n
“He has had two jobs. One is to deal with monetary policy. One is to deal with regulation. He has failed at both,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Look, I don’t think he should be chairman of the Federal Reserve. I have said it as publicly as I know how to say it. I’ve said it to everyone,” said Warren, who serves on the Senate Banking Committee.<\/p>\n
Powell, first nominated by then-President Donald Trump in 2017<\/a>, has faced criticism over his handling of banking regulations following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank<\/a>.<\/p>\n Warren, who has been pressing for stricter banking regulations, said Powell \u201ctook a flamethrower to the regulations\u201d when Trump took office, adding that Trump gave Congress the \u201cauthority to lighten the regulations even more.\u201d<\/p>\n “And then the CEOs of the banks did exactly what we expected. They loaded up on risk that boosted their short-term profits. They gave themselves huge bonuses and salaries and exploded their banks,” Warren said.<\/p>\n In a letter Saturday<\/a>, Warren urged the inspectors general at the Treasury Department, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve to immediately open a “thorough independent investigation” to determine the causes of the bank management and regulatory issues that led to the collapse of SVB and Signature Bank.<\/p>\n \u201cThe bank\u2019s executives, who took unnecessary risks or failed to hedge against entirely foreseeable threats, must be held accountable for these failures,\u201d Warren wrote in the letter, asking for preliminary findings of the probe to be delivered to Congress within 30 days.<\/p>\n A group of Democrats led by Warren and Rep. Katie Porter of California unveiled legislation last week<\/a> to restore bank regulations that were undone under the Trump administration in 2018 \u2014 an effort they say would address the cause of SVB’s collapse.<\/p>\n At that time, Republicans in Congress pushed a bill \u2014 with the support of some centrist Democrats \u2014 that eased Dodd-Frank financial regulations on midsize banks, raising the \u201ctoo big to fail\u201d threshold from $50 billion in assets to $250 billion. The Warren-Porter bill<\/a>, first reported by NBC News<\/a>, would repeal that measure, but it faces a tough road to passage in Congress.<\/p>\n Some Democrats who voted for the 2018 bill <\/a>are standing by their votes, joining Republicans in resisting more scrutiny for banks and arguing that the U.S. still has ways under existing law to tackle the issue.<\/p>\n President Joe Biden renominated Powell<\/a> as Federal Reserve chairman in Nov. 2021. The decision was met with pushback from some progressives and certain Democrats had argued that Powell was too hands-off as a banking regulator.\u00a0<\/p>\n Around that time, Warren was a leading opponent of Powell, calling him a “dangerous man” who had led an effort to weaken the nation’s banking system at a hearing in late 2021<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Warren urged Powell to recuse himself from an internal probe into SVB last week, saying his actions “directly contributed to these bank failures.”<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve opposed him because of his views on regulation,” Warren said on “Meet the Press” Sunday, “and what he was already doing to weaken regulation.”<\/p>\n