WASHINGTON — The Senate Banking Committee has scheduled a March 20 hearing on five nominations to posts at financial regulatory agencies.
The nominees to be considered at the 10 a.m. hearing are:
• Jerome Powell and Jeremy Stein, who were tapped by President Obama in December to fill open seats on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Stein is a Harvard economics professor who previously served in the Obama administration, and Powell is a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center who served as a Treasury undersecretary in the first Bush administration.
• Jeremiah Norton, who was nominated to fill an open seat on the board of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Norton is a JP Morgan Chase executive who previously served as an adviser to former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
• Richard Berner, Obama's nominee to be the first director of the Office of Financial Research. The OFR, as it is known, was created by the Dodd-Frank Act with the goal of using data to better detect threats to financial stability. Berner is a former chief economist at Morgan Stanley who has been heading the OFR on an interim basis.
• Christy Romero, the nominee for special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Romero has served as acting inspector general since Neil Barofsky left the office last year.
The nomination hearings are the first step in a confirmation process that later requires votes by the Banking Committee and by the full Senate.
The nominations of Martin Gruenberg to chair the FDIC and Thomas Curry to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency remain stuck in the Senate following President Obama's decision to use a recess appointment to install Richard Cordray at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
