WASHINGTON — Jerome H. Powell was sworn in as Federal Reserve Board chairman on Monday.
Powell, a former investment banker who has served as a Fed governor, was confirmed by the Senate last month to a four-year term as chair of the central bank. His term as a board member expires in 2028.
“My colleagues and I at the Federal Reserve will put everything we have into serving you and our country with objectivity, independence, and integrity,” Powell said in a prerecorded introduction
Powell is succeeding Janet Yellen, whose last day at the Fed was on Friday. Her final act at the agency, imposing a consent order on Wells Fargo for its phony-accounts scandal, dealt a huge blow to the bank. In concert with the order, which prevents Wells from growing larger until it has addressed governance problems, the bank will remove four members of its board. The Fed board signed off on the consent order by a 3-0 vote, with Powell supporting the move. Fed Gov. Lael Brainard also supported the action.
Marvin Goodfriend, a Carnegie Mellon professor and former economist at Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, was tapped to fill one of the still-vacant Fed board seats, but he has not been confirmed yet.
Powell was nominated as a Fed governor in 2012 and helped craft post-crisis regulations that he supports, but he said during a Nov. 28 nomination hearing that he believes in tailoring regulations to the risk posed by institutions.
“We want regulations to be the most intense and most stringent for the very largest, most complex institutions and decrease in intensity, stringency as we move down” to regional and community banks, Powell said in the hearing, before the Senate Banking Committee.
