Latest news with #Barr
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's Pick for Fed's Top Regulator Expected to Be Friendly to Wall Street
(Bloomberg Markets) -- A red baseball cap sits above Michelle Bowman's filing cabinet in her office at the US Federal Reserve in Washington. It's emblazoned with the words 'make community banks great again.' The TV in her office is tuned to Fox News, and the self-described workaholic has a sticky note on her door asking visitors to knock loudly because the door is heavy. ICE Moves to DNA-Test Families Targeted for Deportation with New Contract The Global Struggle to Build Safer Cars At London's New Design Museum, Visitors Get Hands-On Access LA City Council Passes Budget That Trims Police, Fire Spending NYC Residents Want Safer Streets, Cheaper Housing, Survey Says Already a Fed governor, Bowman is likely to become one of the central bank's key leaders, in charge of banking regulation. The Senate Banking Committee voted along party lines to advance her nomination as vice chair for supervision, and the full Republican-controlled chamber is set to vote on her confirmation on Wednesday. The industry has praised Bowman's nomination, highlighting her drive to scale back a massive bank-capital proposal that it says will hurt lending, erode its competitive edge and potentially reduce economic growth. Critics are concerned that she's too focused on what banks want — at a time when the White House is embarking on a deregulatory drive, threatening the Fed's independence and introducing tariff-fueled economic uncertainty that could put the financial system under pressure. That she's in line for the job now is due to Michael Barr's surprise announcement that he would leave it. Barr stepped down in February while remaining a governor, even though his term as vice chair extended to July 2026. He wanted to avoid a protracted legal fight over a possible demotion by Trump. Bowman, who asks everyone she meets to please call her 'Miki,' quickly made her interest in the job clear. She talked to state bank regulators who had lobbied to get her onto the Fed board in 2018, according to people familiar with the matter who didn't want to be identified discussing the private communications. She asked some of them to signal to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that he should push Trump to fill Barr's seat rather than leave it vacant, and pitched herself as a regulatory insider who wouldn't even need to wait for Senate confirmation to get started. Industry players like the Independent Community Bankers of America and the American Bankers Association also rallied behind her. Bowman herself points to the experience she has gained in an eventful last seven years. 'I've seen a lot since I've been here at the Fed,' says Bowman, 54. 'We've seen the entire shutting down of the economy and restarting it again.' She will have to navigate a position that has been an awkward fit for the Fed, an agency that strives to remain as apolitical as possible in setting monetary policy. The supervision job was created by the Dodd-Frank Act in response to the 2008 financial crisis. Chair Jerome Powell himself has said that placing the burden of developing recommendations on a single person rather than the entire Fed board has made bank policy more volatile. Bowman has deep roots in small-town banking. Born in Hawaii, she spent time living in Germany as a part of a military-kid upbringing, and worked in the UK. But home has always been rural Council Grove, Kansas, about 90 miles northeast of Wichita. 'The closest town is about 35 miles away with a 2,200 population,' Bowman says. In Council Grove, she worked at Farmers & Drovers Bank, which her great-great grandfather helped charter in 1882, before becoming the Kansas state banking commissioner in 2017. A lawyer, she also previously worked in Washington as counsel to US House committees and as a policy adviser in the Department of Homeland Security during the George W. Bush administration. She was first nominated to the Fed board by Trump in 2018, to fill a position designated for an expert on community banks, which have long been losing market share to bigger lenders. Since then, Bowman has criss-crossed the country — by her count visiting all but four states. She has given detailed speeches to community banking groups on how vital these lenders are to the economy. Her travels across the US and to five continents rival only Powell, among her board colleagues, in the number of engagements. Over time, she has become more vocal, often supporting easing regulations that she says are too burdensome for the smallest banks. Her missives on regulation were often a foil to Barr's attempts to significantly increase capital requirements for banks — that is, to have them further pad their financial cushions, depending on the risks they take, so they can absorb losses during a crisis. 'My greatest concern about Governor Bowman is that I haven't seen any daylight between her publicly stated positions and the wish list of the largest banks for lower capital requirements and less demanding supervision,' says Arthur Wilmarth, a professor emeritus at George Washington University Law School who was a consultant to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission created by Congress. That could change if she prioritizes coalition-building with other members of the board, he says regulation already has put banks on firmer ground. 'We've created a much stronger, safer, sound banking system,' she says. 'Thorny Issues of Fed independence' The vice chair job is probably the most demanding in all of financial regulation, says Graham Steele, a Fed alumnus who also served as a Biden-era Treasury official. He adds that it's a step up in difficulty from being a single governor with one vote and giving speeches on personal views. 'That person has always had to balance a complex and delicate set of policy, political and procedural issues while finding consensus between and across the views of the other banking agencies and the Fed's board members,' Steele says. 'In this administration, they now also have to navigate thorny issues of Fed independence with a White House that's seeking to bring independent agencies under political control, including the Fed's regulatory functions.' As a board member, Bowman will also continue to have a voice in monetary policy. In that realm, she has been somewhat more hawkish on interest rates than her colleagues. She cast the first dissenting vote by a governor in almost 20 years when she voted against the Fed's decision to cut interest rates by half a percentage point in September. That was the first cut since the start of the pandemic; Bowman argued that a smaller, quarter-point cut would have been more appropriate given that inflation was still above the central bank's 2% target. She has a reputation for toughness. People who asked not to be identified discussing internal Fed matters said that tense interactions between Bowman and Fed staff led to a new practice where more senior officials with titles brief her and other governors on policy matters. But some observers see her style as a benefit. She dives into the details and makes sure she understands an analysis and its policy implications, says Mona Elliot, a former Fed official who now advises clients at Patomak Global Partners. 'Ultimately, what the governors care about is really understanding the potential impact of the decisions that they're making,' said Elliot, who briefed Bowman at the beginning of her time at the Fed in Quarles, who held the supervision role before Barr after being chosen by Trump in 2017, says the highly qualified staff at the Fed has a culture that can sometimes be 'too sure of itself' and that this is ripe for change. Bowman has been willing to take on high-profile fights. Shortly after Silicon Valley Bank collapsed in 2023, she started calling for an independent review into what failings led to the lender's fast fall. Barr did his own review, which he called an 'unflinching look' at problems in both the supervision of the bank and the regulatory requirements for an institution of that size. Some critics said the details were vague, and Bowman has insisted the report is insufficient in terms of full accountability and transparency. She has said she wants to launch a third-party review. Covid Lockdowns During the 2020 Covid-induced lockdowns, Bowman was anxious about the Fed not being able to read the economy as the government was offering loans to businesses via banks using the Paycheck Protection Program without a lot of guidance or directives. She began a campaign to reach as many of those lenders as possible. Over the next year, she managed to talk to more than 220 community-bank chief executive officers in 30-minute phone calls. 'I think that really helped allow them to engage with confidence and continue to be the greatest lenders in that program,' she says. Before that campaign, she worked to get her arms around the Fed's consumer compliance program. After hearing complaints about banks waiting three to five years for an exam report, she championed an effort to make the exam process more timely, while preserving its effectiveness. To help advise her, Bowman has turned to the banking world for three staff hires, who recently joined the agency's Division of Supervision and Regulation. Two sweeping proposals are on her radar: a landmark Biden-era bank-capital plan known as Basel III endgame and long-term debt requirements that would affect all lenders with more than $100 billion in assets. As originally drafted, the Basel plan would have hiked the biggest US banks' capital requirements by 19%. The Fed walked it back after fierce industry opposition. Bowman is widely expected to support dramatically easing the requirements. She also plans to rescind the proposal to bolster long-term debt requirements, according to people familiar with the matter. Bowman sided with the industry on its calls to increase the transparency of the Fed's stress tests, which gauge how large banks would fare during a hypothetical recession. And she's working with other Trump regulators on potential changes to a rule—the so-called supplementary leverage ratio—that has constrained banks' trading in the $29 trillion Treasuries market. Bowman has said she wants to keep the Fed's experienced ranks of bank supervisors and examiners, arguing that they're critical to the Fed being able to carry out its regulatory responsibilities. Already, the Trump administration is set to shrink the staff of other financial regulators by more than 2,300, including examiners. The Fed plans to reduce its workforce by about 10% in the next couple of years, but it isn't clear whether that would include examiners. 'Our examinations staff are of the most importance when we're talking about how we execute our responsibilities under supervision for the safety and stability and soundness of the banking system,' Bowman said during her Banking Committee nomination hearing in May. 'If I were to do a review of our supervision and regulation division, should I be confirmed, I would certainly be very sensitive to the fact that we need to be able to fully and effectively implement our responsibilities for bank regulation.' (Updates status of vote in the second paragraph. An earlier version of the story was corrected to remove an inaccurate description of note in the first paragraph.) Cavs Owner Dan Gilbert Wants to Donate His Billions—and Walk Again YouTube Is Swallowing TV Whole, and It's Coming for the Sitcom Millions of Americans Are Obsessed With This Japanese Barbecue Sauce Is Elon Musk's Political Capital Spent? Trump Considers Deporting Migrants to Rwanda After the UK Decides Not To ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's Pick for Fed's Top Regulator Expected to Be Friendly to Wall Street
(Bloomberg Markets) -- A red baseball cap sits above Michelle Bowman's filing cabinet in her office at the US Federal Reserve in Washington. It's emblazoned with the words 'make community banks great again.' The TV in her office is tuned to Fox News, and the self-described workaholic has a sticky note on her door asking visitors to knock loudly because the door is heavy and she's working hard. The Global Struggle to Build Safer Cars At London's New Design Museum, Visitors Get Hands-On Access LA City Council Passes Budget That Trims Police, Fire Spending ICE Moves to DNA-Test Families Targeted for Deportation with New Contract NYC Residents Want Safer Streets, Cheaper Housing, Survey Says Already a Fed governor, Bowman is likely to become one of the central bank's key leaders, in charge of banking regulation. The Senate Banking Committee voted along party lines to advance her nomination as vice chair for supervision, and the full Republican-controlled chamber is almost certain to also give her its nod as early as Wednesday. The industry has praised Bowman's nomination, highlighting her drive to scale back a massive bank-capital proposal that it says will hurt lending, erode its competitive edge and potentially reduce economic growth. Critics are concerned that she's too focused on what banks want — at a time when the White House is embarking on a deregulatory drive, threatening the Fed's independence and introducing tariff-fueled economic uncertainty that could put the financial system under pressure. That she's in line for the job now is due to Michael Barr's surprise announcement that he would leave it. Barr stepped down in February while remaining a governor, even though his term as vice chair extended to July 2026. He wanted to avoid a protracted legal fight over a possible demotion by Trump. Bowman, who asks everyone she meets to please call her 'Miki,' quickly made her interest in the job clear. She talked to state bank regulators who had lobbied to get her onto the Fed board in 2018, according to people familiar with the matter who didn't want to be identified discussing the private communications. She asked some of them to signal to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that he should push Trump to fill Barr's seat rather than leave it vacant, and pitched herself as a regulatory insider who wouldn't even need to wait for Senate confirmation to get started. Industry players like the Independent Community Bankers of America and the American Bankers Association also rallied behind her. Bowman herself points to the experience she has gained in an eventful last seven years. 'I've seen a lot since I've been here at the Fed,' says Bowman, 54. 'We've seen the entire shutting down of the economy and restarting it again.' She will have to navigate a position that has been an awkward fit for the Fed, an agency that strives to remain as apolitical as possible in setting monetary policy. The supervision job was created by the Dodd-Frank Act in response to the 2008 financial crisis. Chair Jerome Powell himself has said that placing the burden of developing recommendations on a single person rather than the entire Fed board has made bank policy more volatile. Bowman has deep roots in small-town banking. Born in Hawaii, she spent time living in Germany as a part of a military-kid upbringing, and worked in the UK. But home has always been rural Council Grove, Kansas, about 90 miles northeast of Wichita. 'The closest town is about 35 miles away with a 2,200 population,' Bowman says. In Council Grove, she worked at Farmers & Drovers Bank, which her great-great grandfather helped charter in 1882, before becoming the Kansas state banking commissioner in 2017. A lawyer, she also previously worked in Washington as counsel to US House committees and as a policy adviser in the Department of Homeland Security during the George W. Bush administration. She was first nominated to the Fed board by Trump in 2018, to fill a position designated for an expert on community banks, which have long been losing market share to bigger lenders. Since then, Bowman has criss-crossed the country — by her count visiting all but four states. She has given detailed speeches to community banking groups on how vital these lenders are to the economy. Her travels across the US and to five continents rival only Powell, among her board colleagues, in the number of engagements. Over time, she has become more vocal, often supporting easing regulations that she says are too burdensome for the smallest banks. Her missives on regulation were often a foil to Barr's attempts to significantly increase capital requirements for banks — that is, to have them further pad their financial cushions, depending on the risks they take, so they can absorb losses during a crisis. 'My greatest concern about Governor Bowman is that I haven't seen any daylight between her publicly stated positions and the wish list of the largest banks for lower capital requirements and less demanding supervision,' says Arthur Wilmarth, a professor emeritus at George Washington University Law School who was a consultant to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission created by Congress. That could change if she prioritizes coalition-building with other members of the board, he says regulation already has put banks on firmer ground. 'We've created a much stronger, safer, sound banking system,' she says. 'Thorny Issues of Fed independence' The vice chair job is probably the most demanding in all of financial regulation, says Graham Steele, a Fed alumnus who also served as a Biden-era Treasury official. He adds that it's a step up in difficulty from being a single governor with one vote and giving speeches on personal views. 'That person has always had to balance a complex and delicate set of policy, political and procedural issues while finding consensus between and across the views of the other banking agencies and the Fed's board members,' Steele says. 'In this administration, they now also have to navigate thorny issues of Fed independence with a White House that's seeking to bring independent agencies under political control, including the Fed's regulatory functions.' As a board member, Bowman will also continue to have a voice in monetary policy. In that realm, she has been somewhat more hawkish on interest rates than her colleagues. She cast the first dissenting vote by a governor in almost 20 years when she voted against the Fed's decision to cut interest rates by half a percentage point in September. That was the first cut since the start of the pandemic; Bowman argued that a smaller, quarter-point cut would have been more appropriate given that inflation was still above the central bank's 2% target. She has a reputation for toughness. People who asked not to be identified discussing internal Fed matters said that tense interactions between Bowman and Fed staff led to a new practice where more senior officials with titles brief her and other governors on policy matters. But some observers see her style as a benefit. She dives into the details and makes sure she understands an analysis and its policy implications, says Mona Elliot, a former Fed official who now advises clients at Patomak Global Partners. 'Ultimately, what the governors care about is really understanding the potential impact of the decisions that they're making,' said Elliot, who briefed Bowman at the beginning of her time at the Fed in Quarles, who held the supervision role before Barr after being chosen by Trump in 2017, says the highly qualified staff at the Fed has a culture that can sometimes be 'too sure of itself' and that this is ripe for change. Bowman has been willing to take on high-profile fights. Shortly after Silicon Valley Bank collapsed in 2023, she started calling for an independent review into what failings led to the lender's fast fall. Barr did his own review, which he called an 'unflinching look' at problems in both the supervision of the bank and the regulatory requirements for an institution of that size. Some critics said the details were vague, and Bowman has insisted the report is insufficient in terms of full accountability and transparency. She has said she wants to launch a third-party review. Covid Lockdowns During the 2020 Covid-induced lockdowns, Bowman was anxious about the Fed not being able to read the economy as the government was offering loans to businesses via banks using the Paycheck Protection Program without a lot of guidance or directives. She began a campaign to reach as many of those lenders as possible. Over the next year, she managed to talk to more than 220 community-bank chief executive officers in 30-minute phone calls. 'I think that really helped allow them to engage with confidence and continue to be the greatest lenders in that program,' she says. Before that campaign, she worked to get her arms around the Fed's consumer compliance program. After hearing complaints about banks waiting three to five years for an exam report, she championed an effort to make the exam process more timely, while preserving its effectiveness. To help advise her, Bowman has turned to the banking world for three staff hires, who recently joined the agency's Division of Supervision and Regulation. Two sweeping proposals are on her radar: a landmark Biden-era bank-capital plan known as Basel III endgame and long-term debt requirements that would affect all lenders with more than $100 billion in assets. As originally drafted, the Basel plan would have hiked the biggest US banks' capital requirements by 19%. The Fed walked it back after fierce industry opposition. Bowman is widely expected to support dramatically easing the requirements. She also plans to rescind the proposal to bolster long-term debt requirements, according to people familiar with the matter. Bowman sided with the industry on its calls to increase the transparency of the Fed's stress tests, which gauge how large banks would fare during a hypothetical recession. And she's working with other Trump regulators on potential changes to a rule—the so-called supplementary leverage ratio—that has constrained banks' trading in the $29 trillion Treasuries market. Bowman has said she wants to keep the Fed's experienced ranks of bank supervisors and examiners, arguing that they're critical to the Fed being able to carry out its regulatory responsibilities. Already, the Trump administration is set to shrink the staff of other financial regulators by more than 2,300, including examiners. The Fed plans to reduce its workforce by about 10% in the next couple of years, but it isn't clear whether that would include examiners. 'Our examinations staff are of the most importance when we're talking about how we execute our responsibilities under supervision for the safety and stability and soundness of the banking system,' Bowman said during her Banking Committee nomination hearing in May. 'If I were to do a review of our supervision and regulation division, should I be confirmed, I would certainly be very sensitive to the fact that we need to be able to fully and effectively implement our responsibilities for bank regulation.' (Adds planned Wednesday vote in second paragraph.) YouTube Is Swallowing TV Whole, and It's Coming for the Sitcom Millions of Americans Are Obsessed With This Japanese Barbecue Sauce Is Elon Musk's Political Capital Spent? Trump Considers Deporting Migrants to Rwanda After the UK Decides Not To Mark Zuckerberg Loves MAGA Now. Will MAGA Ever Love Him Back? ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
CNBC
a day ago
- Business
- CNBC
This 22-year-old startup founder got his college to pay him $200,000: 'Sometimes, you just have to ask'
It's no secret that college in the United States is expensive — about 43 million people live with student debt and the outstanding federal student loan balance stands at about $1.8 trillion, according to the Education Data Initiative. But startup founder Emil Barr says everything is negotiable — even your college tuition. In fact, on top of successfully negotiating with his school administration to cover about $60,000 of his tuition fees, the 22-year-old startup founder made more than $140,000 over the four-year period that he was enrolled, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. By the time he graduated, Barr had been paid over $200,000 by Miami University. He said he learned the art of negotiation through his experience as an entrepreneur. During his freshman year at Miami University, Barr built his first startup, a social media marketing agency called Step Up Social. He entered university with a scholarship that covered only part of his tuition. By his sophomore year, Barr used his entrepreneurial experience as leverage and convinced his school administration to fund the rest of his tuition At the time, he said, the university was making a concerted effort to attract more donors, and as part of that, was focused on developing and strengthening its entrepreneurship program on campus. "[But] the one downside is there weren't that many student-run businesses at the college for them to talk about," he said. As a result, Barr said, he often spent time speaking with donors they brought on campus, as well as with the university press outlet. "Towards the end of my second year at Miami, that's when we really started to have these conversations, because the business had gone somewhere. We had done over a million dollars in revenue," Barr said. "So I sat down with the dean, and I was like: 'Look ... I'm spending a lot of time doing this. I feel like I'm [creating] a lot of value for the school, and yet I'm still paying for [some of] my own tuition and working side jobs to try to make that happen," Barr said. In December 2022, he negotiated a financial package that fully covered his tuition. Barr also won multiple on-campus startup pitch competitions and student grants which earned him more than $30,000 throughout his time at the university, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. By the time his junior year rolled around, Barr had also brought on the university as a client of his business. In total, he made over $100,000 in revenue through the university's contracts with Step Up Social. But one of his "crowning accomplishments," Barr said, was not the financial payouts — but instead being the only student on campus who was given a faculty parking pass. "I fought for that for nine months ... people still joke about it, because I was so determined," he said. Step Up Social has since acquired and rebranded to Candid Network, an online marketing agency specializing in user-generated content. Barr said he's in the process of selling the business. While it's become trendy for startup founders to drop out of school to build their businesses full-time, Barr found a way to stay enrolled — and profit from it, all while building a business from the ground up. One skill that has helped him over the years is learning how to ask for things. "What [I] learned is a lot of the things that people are scared to ask for — really, you can get them. Sometimes, you just have to ask," Barr said. He said a big part of negotiation is simply finding out what is valuable to the other side, and adjusting from there. "I think that so often people just assume," he said. Instead of guessing, he suggested being genuine and asking the other side what they want to get out of the situation. "Everyone always has an angle or an end game, which sounds a little bit cynical. I think that a way you [can] overcome that cynicism is just ask: 'What would make you happy?' And then you have a starting point," Barr said. He graduated from Miami University in 2024 and is set to join Stanford's Graduate School of Business as a deferred admit in September 2027. Today, Barr also runs the workforce development platform Flashpass, a business he co-founded in 2022. Flashpass brought in $1 million in revenue in 2024 and another $1 million year-to-date, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Morristown hosts the Tennessee State Disc Golf Championships
MORRISTOWN, Tenn. (WATE) — Disc Golfers from across the country gathered in Morristown on Sunday for the Tennessee State Disc Golf Championships. The annual tournament tees off every year during the first weekend of June. Morristown proudly calls itself the disc golf capital of the state, and this weekend, that title was on full display at Panther Creek State Park. Sunday marks round three, the final day of the Tennessee State Disc Golf Championships. Tennessee Valley Authority leads Douglas Lake 'Community Day of Service' 'Morristown has really built up a very good core of disc golf courses, and the city governments, the chamber of commerce's, the parks departments, they're all heavily involved and really looking to keep making this a big event every year,' explained Tim Barr the Competition Director for the tournament. This year's event featured five different courses and 529 players, ranging from nine years old to over 75 years old.'There's a lot of courses in Tennessee, but you have to have every single piece in place for a big event like this to come together, and it all starts with government, with the parks department, with the chamber of commerce being heavily involved. That makes a big difference,' Barr Robinson, a Disc Golfer in the mixed pro division, traveled from Asheville, North Carolina to compete. He says this tournament is one he never misses.'This park is a bomber course, so if you like to throw far, this offers everything that you need. You're going to be able to shape your shots. You're going to be able to throw it really far, really hard every time. But also just the area in general has so many courses and so much to offer with, I mean, just the restaurants and the disc golf scene across the state,' said sport itself continues to grow, known for being beginner friendly and budget friendly.'I really like the way the discs float through the air and glide. There's a lot of shape manipulation that you can do,' explained Luke Wondergem another Disc Golfer in the mixed pro division. 'One last family supper' Knoxville coffee shop to close Other Park locations throughout Morristown that were utilized during the tournament included Cherokee Park, Frank Lorino Park, Wayne Hansard Park, and Mossy Creek Course at Carson Newman university. First place finishers in all divisions received a trophy. 'Pro division always impresses, men and women, so every year we watch these players come out and it's just like every year they get better, and they throw it farther and they make longer putts. And it's a lot of fun to watch,' said Barr. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
West Australian
3 days ago
- West Australian
Dean Barr: Halls Head College teacher's registration cancelled over disturbing allegations of misconduct in UK
The West Australian exclusive Dean Barr: Halls Head College teacher's registration cancelled over disturbing allegations of misconduct in UK
