Biden Fed picks face GOP skepticism in Senate hearing
By Martha C. White
Lawmakers sparred with one another and President Joe Biden’s Federal Reserve nominees in a sometimes contentious Senate Banking Committee hearing Thursday morning. Biden has an unusual chance to nominate three members to the central bank’s policymaking Board of Governors as the result of an unfilled vacancy during Donald Trump’s presidency. Biden has said he wants to increase diversity at the Fed, and his trio of nominees includes two women and two Black nominees….Raskin said her viewpoint on the role of banking regulations and climate policy was taken out of context, and she labored to draw a distinction between emergency pandemic capital funding and everyday banking regulation. Karen Shaw Petrou, the managing partner of the consulting firm Federal Financial Analytics, said, “She is going to need every Democrat.” While Raskin has been confirmed to previous government roles on a bipartisan basis, Petrou said, the stakes are higher this time around. “In those positions, she was less important, and you didn’t have the third rail of climate change with the kind of constituent and ideological interests that were in evidence today,” she said.