Opinions

Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard was interviewed for the top job at the U.S. central bank when she visited the White House last week, according to people familiar with the discussions. She and Fed Chair Jerome Powell are the only people who have publicly surfaced as being in the running for the post.

Directors can urge executives to move more quickly in gauging their institutions’ vulnerability to extreme weather events, said acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu. He offered a list of five questions every board member should ask senior leaders about their progress.

Senior Federal Reserve officials violated the central bank’s prohibition of stock trading that may appear improper, even if specific guidelines weren’t broken, Chair Jerome Powell said.

Senior congressional Democrats are concerned that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network — an arm of the Treasury Department — is dragging its feet on a rulemaking to require corporations to report their beneficial owners.

A report by the agency found that consumers in majority Black neighborhoods were more than twice as likely as those in white neighborhoods to lodge complaints with the credit bureaus over information in their files. Meanwhile, disputes were less common among older borrowers.

President Biden said he’ll announce soon his choice of nominees for chair and other vacancies on the Federal Reserve, amid a scandal over stock trades by central bank officials.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell called Sherrod Brown, the head of the Senate panel that oversees the central bank, this week to discuss Powell’s sweeping proposal to limit securities trading by senior Fed officials, as well as Brown’s new legislation on the subject.

The agency said the risk management program for Cenlar FSB, which performs servicing functions for financial institution clients, was inadequate for the bank's size.

The European Union plans to soften the blow to banks from new capital rules, arguing that an easier stance ensures lenders can keep funding the economy as it recovers from the shock of the pandemic.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen defended Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s record on regulating the financial system amid attacks by progressives seeking to deny him a second term — even though in the past she’s expressed some misgivings about rulemaking under his watch.