WASHINGTON – The transition team for President-elect Donald Trump announced a series of names this week for people who will help facilitate an orderly transfer of power at the federal financial regulators.
The administrators have been grouped into "landing teams" who will collect information on each agency, ranging from the agency's budget and policies to the status of various rulemakings and the current administration's priorities.
Just because someone is heading up a landing team does not necessarily mean they will be converted to a position within the administration, but the job is to inform the transition team and ensure that the incoming appointees can hit the ground running after Trump is sworn into office in January
The landing teams announced Tuesday include a group of Washington insiders with a deep understanding of how the regulatory agencies work.
Paul Atkins, who twice served as a director on the Securities and Exchange Commission and is now chief executive officer of Patomak Global Partners, was chosen to lead the landing team for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
Securities lawyer and former SEC General Counsel Ralph Ferrara is on the landing team for the Federal Reserve Board, while Alex Pollock, the former head of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago, is heading up the efforts with the Financial Stability Oversight Council and Federal Trade Commission.
Pollock is now a senior fellow at the R Street Institute think tank and formerly was at the American Enterprise Institute.
Timothy Bitsberger is leading the efforts at the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Bitsberger was an assistant Treasury secretary in the second Bush Administration and was later a senior vice president at Freddie Mac and a managing director at BNP Paribas.
Former National Credit Union Administration board member Mark Fryzel is helping with the transition of the NCUA and economic consultant Sharon Brown-Hruska, who served as a commissioner and acting chairman at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is on the landing team for the CFTC, Farm Credit Administration and the SEC.
The Trump transition website has released five names of people on the Treasury landing team. Curtis Dubay of the Heritage Foundation is the only privately funded member; the others are serving as volunteers.
