Congress Examines Nominees to Key Financial Regulatory Posts

The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs questioned President Trump’s nominees for head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and Vice-Chair for Supervision of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on July 27th. Senator Mike Crapo (R- ID), Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, noted that, “these two positions are critically important to ensuring a safe, sound, and vibrant financial system and we are fortunate to have two highly qualified individuals to consider for these posts.”

Joseph Otting, the President’s choice to join the OCC, is a former employee of Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin’s OneWest Bank. Randal Quarles, also with heavy ties to Treasury, fielded questions from Senate Banking members related to his nomination to the Federal Reserve. Quarles discussed the need to reduce complexity in federal financial regulation, echoing the recommendations released by the Dept. of the Treasury in a report last month.

Senate Democrats questioned Quarles’ record at Treasury during George W. Bush’s presidency, a tenure that included a major mortgage crisis, bank bailouts, and spawned America’s modern financial regulatory system in the Dodd-Frank Act. With so many posts remaining unfilled in the Trump Administration, many major projects, like the OCC’s FinTech charter system, remain in limbo because of a lack of agency leadership.