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U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday called Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell “a dangerous man” and said she would oppose any move by the Biden White House to give him a second four-year term.
During a Senate Banking Committee hearing, Warren said that Powell has taken “plenty of actions” to weaken Fed oversight over the nation’s biggest banks. These same banks benefited from government support to financial markets in the aftermath of last year’s crisis sparked by the coronavirus, she said.
“Over and over, you have acted to make our banking system less safe. And that makes you a dangerous man to head up the Fed. And that is why I will oppose your nomination,” Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said.
Warren said giving Powell another four-year term “means gambling that for the next five years, a Republican-majority at the Federal Reserve, with a Republican chair, who has regularly voted to deregulate Wall Street, won’t drive this economy over a financial cliff again.”
“I don’t think that this is a risk worth taking,” Warren said.
Analysts who follow Washington developments for Wall Street believe that President Joe Biden will decide to give Powell a second-term as Fed chairman. Powell’s first term ends in February.
So far the White House has remained silent about the Fed leadership question.
U.S. stocks were trading lower on Tuesday with the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
S&P 500 Index
SPX,
and the Nasdaq Composite Index
COMP,
all down more than 1% as the yield on the 10-year Treasury note
TMUBMUSD10Y,
rose above 1.5%.
