Under pressure, Powell says Fed to revamp its trading rules

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank will overhaul its financial ethics policies in response to growing questions about investing and trading decisions by high-ranking Fed officials that raise potential conflicts of interest. Powell stopped short of saying explicitly that the trading moves were inappropriate. And he provided no details about what the Fed might do or how it would conduct its ethics review. The issue arose after it was revealed that Robert Kaplan, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, had traded millions of dollars’ worth of individual stocks at the same time that the Fed was discussing and taking extraordinary measures to boost the economy.