Elizabeth Warren to Fed: Stop Delegating on Enforcement
On Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) called on the heads of the Federal Reserve, the US central bank that sets monetary policy and helps regulate Wall Street, to take a more active role in bank oversight.
The Fed metes out dozens of penalties against banks each year, for infractions including faulty foreclosure practices and inadequate money laundering protections. But the seven board members—including newly-minted Fed chair Janet Yellen—who head the Federal Reserve rarely vote on penalty and enforcement decisions. Of the roughly 1,000 formal enforcement actions taken by the Federal Reserve over the past 10 years, only 11 were voted on by the board. The rest were delegated to Fed staff, sometimes even mid-level employees. Warren, who sits on the Senate banking committee, and Cummings, the ranking member of the House oversight and government reform committee, have been critical of this arrangement, arguing that the delegation of authority results in penalties that are too lenient. On Tuesday, the two Democrats sent a letter to Yellen asking her to tighten the Fed’s rules governing when the Board of Governors may delegate regulatory decisions, and when they must take important supervisory duties into their own hands.
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