Biden Considering Sarah Bloom Raskin to Take Top Fed Banking Spot

The Biden administration is considering former Fed governor Sarah Bloom Raskin for a top position at the Federal Reserve.

As the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday (Dec. 28), Raskin would become the central bank’s vice chairwoman of supervision, while two other nominees would fill board seats. This position is considered the country’s most influential overseer of the banking system.

Citing unnamed sources, the WSJ says Biden is also considering two economists for soon-to-be-vacated seats on the board: Lisa Cook, who teaches at Michigan State University, and Philip Jefferson, a professor and administrator at North Carolina’s Davidson College.

The report notes that Raskin’s nomination could appease progressives in Biden’s party, who had opposed the president’s decision last month to offer a second term to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, a Republican holdover from the Trump administration.

Read more: White House Mulling Former CFPB Director Richard Cordray as Fed Banking Regulator

As PYMNTS reported last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) had backed the nomination of Richard Corday, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and another name floated by the administration. The WSJ report says Warren would also support Raskin.

Raskin is an attorney who served in the Obama administration as deputy Treasury secretary from 2014 to 2017, following a stint as Fed governor from 2010 to 2014. She was confirmed by a voice vote in the Senate in both cases.

Since leaving the public sector, Raskin has been vocal about the need for the Fed and other financial regulators at the federal level to be more aggressive in addressing threats from climate disasters, such as storms or wildfires.

“There is opportunity in preemptive, early and bold actions by federal economic policy makers looking to avoid catastrophe,” Raskin wrote last year in the foreword of a report by the Ceres Accelerator for Sustainable Markets, a climate advocacy organization.

The WSJ notes that with the Senate sharply divided, the president will need either unanimous support from Democrats to get these nominees confirmed or for some Republicans to cross party lines.