Wall Street is getting a major reprieve from tougher oversight after President Joe Biden’s pick to be the top U.S. banking regulator ran aground.
Progressives had pinned their hopes on Sarah Bloom Raskin — a Duke University law professor and Washington insider who previously held high-level jobs at the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve — to help bring about an era of much tougher oversight for the nation’s largest lenders. Those plans, and expectations for the Fed to play a bigger role in combating climate change, are now in disarray after Raskin failed to win enough support in the Senate.
She faced stiff opposition from Republicans to be the Fed’s vice chair for supervision since she was nominated in January despite easily winning confirmation to serve as Fed governor and then deputy Treasury secretary earlier in her career. Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, led the effort to refuse a vote on her candidacy, citing her previous comments on fighting global warming and questions around her work for a Colorado fintech company.
