17-03-2025
Trump Picks Bowman to Be Fed Vice Chair for Supervision
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So Mike Bloomberg had reported that this move was likely. But what should we know about Mickey Bowman serving in this role? Well, she would be likely to be confirmed. She's already been confirmed as a Fed governor. So it is just the additional title as vice chair. So it shouldn't be too difficult for her. She is a Republican. She was appointed in 2018 by president then President Trump, to an open seat as a governor, filling essentially what is the small bank governor responsibility on the board. She was a Kansas bank commissioner and she ran a family bank in Kansas for a number of years. So she has a lot of experience in there in that area. And she should be confirmed without any kind of tacit. That was my next question. Mike, as the president writes, Mickey's been serving honorably on the Fed's Board of governors since 2018, has great expertise dealing with inflation, regulation and banking. Will senators see it that way? I think they will. She's obviously very much sees things from a deregulatory Republican point of view. She has argued with Michael Barr about things like the supplementary leverage ratio and about additional capital required for banks, suggesting that the banks need to be tiered, that we need to give smaller banks less regulation than bigger banks. But overall, she is a product of the banking system. So it's a philosophical difference rather than any question about her qualifications. Well, and we know that Michael Barr is going to still remain a governor, even though he will no longer be serving in this role and does raise the question of how the Fed in its entirety is going to be approaching whatever capital requirements look like from here, including the chairman, Jerome Powell. Well, that is a big question for the banking industry, because there is something called the Basel three Endgame, which is a new set of regulations on top of previous ones that came out of the Basel Banking Working Group in Switzerland. That would require higher capital levels for banks, for the biggest banks, basically. And those banks have been fighting that for quite some time, not only the capital levels, but the complexity of regulation. They got to the point where the Fed withdrew the proposal last year and reworked it and then put it out again, was planning to re propose it this winter. And because Michael Barr last, they have backed off on that. Now the question is, does it go forward at all or does it get significantly reworked under new vice chair, Bob?
