Treasury Department

President Biden plans to direct his administration to develop a strategy on climate-related risks for public and private financial assets, according to a draft document seen by Bloomberg News.

Top officials at the U.S. central bank and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reaffirmed their commitment to understand how extreme weather events affect financial institutions and the economy as a whole. Many Republicans, however, worry the Federal Reserve’s new climate focus strays too far from its traditional function.

The State Department has added 14 Chinese lawmakers, including a member of the Communist Party’s ruling Politburo, to a blacklist under the Hong Kong Autonomy Act. Banks face sanctions if they do business with them.

Nellie Liang, President Biden's pick to serve as the Treasury's undersecretary for domestic finance, didn't wait to be nominated before beginning the task of strengthening Wall Street oversight.

The backing from the Emergency Capital Investment Fund is meant to help financial institutions direct aid to lower-income communities struggling in the pandemic.

Detecting business dealings with banned parties means screening a maze of transactions, and Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control supports calls for the industry to take a risk-based approach. But regulators effectively require banks to track everything, which is unproductive.

More than a decade after the near collapse of the financial system and the bruising fight over Dodd-Frank put the industry and a Democratic administration in conflict, President Biden and the financial services sector are allied over the COVID-19 relief plan.

Janet Yellen was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the country's 78th Treasury secretary and the first woman to hold the job, putting her in charge of overseeing an economy that continues to be hobbled by the coronavirus pandemic.

Liang, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, would take a position that has been vacant since 2014.

Former Fed Chair Janet Yellen told senators that as Treasury secretary she would create a “hub” to examine the effects of a changing climate on financial institutions and create a database of companies' true owners as required by a recent anti-money-laundering bill.