Reports: Ex-ohio AG Cordray in line for Fed regulator post
WASHINGTON — After serving as Ohio attorney general and head of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the White House is considering Ohio’s Richard Cordray to become the Federal Reserve’s top banking regulator, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News.
Cordray, who currently heads the Education Department division that oversees student loans, declined comment.
U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, told reporters he hasn’t discussed the potential nomination with his colleagues.
“The folks on the banking committee know him well from his role in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and, as you know, he had some critics on the Republican side,” said Portman. Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee recently released a statement that said Cordray “ran roughshod over businesses of all sizes” during his tenure at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Portman says he doesn’t know if he’d back Cordray’s nomination.
“I haven’t had a chance to look at what the job is and how his qualifications would line up,” Portman said.
Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, issued a statement that declined comment on names of specific nominees for the job.
“I’m continuing to work with President Biden to fill the three open seats on the Federal Reserve with public servants that will fight for workers, stand up to Wall Street, and reflect the diversity of our nation,” said Brown.
Cordray’s current job did not require Senate confirmation. Cordray, a Democrat, has also served as Ohio’s treasurer, as a state representative and as the state’s first Solicitor General. He lost a 2018 bid for governor to Republican Mike Dewine.
The Federal Reserve’s vice chair for supervision job has been vacant since the term of Randal Quarles expired in October. Bloomberg reported that former Deputy Treasury Secretary and ex-fed Governor Sarah Bloom Raskin is also being discussed for the job, as well as Raphael Bostic, who heads the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
At a Senate Banking Committee meeting Tuesday, Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren told Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell she wants his agency to “take a much more active role on regulation” and asked what he’d do if the new vice chair for supervision suggests regulatory actions he disagrees with. Warren is a longtime Cordray supporter, but did not name him at the hearing.
“The law gives the vice chair for supervision the authority to set the regulatory and supervisory agenda and I would expect to have a perfectly normal, good, constructive working relationship with a new vice chair for supervision,” replied Powell, a Trump appointee who Biden held over. “I would not see myself as stopping those kinds of proposals from reaching the board since the law seems to indicate that that’s the job of the vice chair for supervision.”