Right now, there are three excellent appointees to the Federal Reserve Board who are waiting to be confirmed by the Senate. The Federal Reserve is arguably the most powerful economic institution in the world, affecting everything from jobs to financial regulation to climate and racial equity.¹ The Fed oversees massive banks like J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs, with the responsibility to ensure Wall Street greed and recklessness don’t crash the economy ever again.²

The Fed has a history of being too cozy with the big Wall Street banks it is supposed to oversee—including letting them get away with abuses that caused the 2008 financial crisis.³ With Trump appointees dominating its leadership, it has doubled down on that approach, loosening rules in the interest of the financial industry in ways that put the rest of us at risk.⁴

Now, the Senate has a chance to remake the Federal Reserve by confirming President Biden’s nominees: Sarah Bloom Raskin, Lisa Cook, and Philip Jefferson. A new lineup at the Fed can help prevent catastrophes, put working families and communities at the center of policymaking, confront systemic racism, and get serious about the systemic risk caused by climate change.

These highly qualified people will bring experience, diversity, and expertise on key economic issues to the Fed, a welcome step forward towards a better-regulated Wall Street, protecting financial stability, and building a more just economy.

The current all-white, almost all-male Republican majority on the board has regularly voted to deregulate Wall Street, boosting bank profits while raising the risks of disaster for the rest of us.

Now imagine the confirmation of Sarah Bloom Raskin to Vice Chairwoman of Supervision, the government’s most influential direct overseer of the U.S. banking system.

Ms. Bloom Raskin has blamed the 2008 crisis on “a deregulatory fervor” that was “brought upon us through a combination of greed, weak regulation and weak enforcement.”⁵ When she previously served four years as a Fed governor, she was directly involved in writing the rules aimed at preventing another 2008-style crisis. Perhaps, most importantly, Ms. Bloom Raskin understands the need for federal financial regulators to proactively address growing threats to financial stability from the climate crisis.

In the 108-year history of the Fed, there have been only three Black board members—all of them men. There hasn’t been even one Black board member for over 15 years.⁶

With the confirmations of Lisa Cook and Philip Jefferson, they won’t just bring their years of work experience and their understanding and advocacy of progressive policy reforms to the table. As Black Americans, they will provide absolutely critical diversity in life experience and lived perspective to the currently all-white board.

Dr. Cook formerly served as a senior economist in the Obama White House. She has a Ph.D. in economics from UC Berkeley and is a professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University.⁷

Dr. Jefferson is an expert on labor markets and poverty, including promoting the benefits of policies that promote an economy's expanding fast enough to raise the income of Black and brown workers. His work has included in-depth examination of the economic volatility faced by African American families and female-headed households.⁸

With these three nominees, President Biden will make sure the Fed prioritizes racial and economic equity, gets tough on Wall Street regulation, puts people and communities first, and takes up its responsibilities to address the climate crisis—but it won’t matter if they aren’t confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

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