Some Democratic senators, whose votes may be needed to confirm the next Fed chairman, have begun raising concerns about Summers’s efforts to block regulation of financial firms when he served during the Clinton administration. Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley called Summers a “life-committed deregulator” in an interview this week.
More recently, as Obama’s adviser, Summers supported steps to correct the excesses that triggered the last crisis.
‘Fundamental Change’
He told a White House meeting in October 2009 that it was time for a “fundamental change” in the way financial markets and firms were regulated because it was “important for the economy, for the sense of economic justice in our society and for millions of Americans.”
Painter said Summers would, if confirmed, have to cut corporate ties, divest any stock in financial firms, and recuse himself for a period of time from making decisions on the firms that paid him.
“I don’t see any serious problem here,” Painter said. “We’ve considered people for that job and quite a few governors of the Fed who’ve come directly out of financial institutions.”
Summers’s background contrasts with that of Yellen, also a millionaire. Yellen, an emeritus professor at the University of California at Berkeley, joined the Fed board of governors in 1994. She left the Fed for the Council of Economic Advisers from 1997 to 1999 before returning in 2004 to serve as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
Yellen’s Worth
Yellen and her husband, fellow Berkeley professor and Nobel economics laureate George Akerlof, held assets between $3.4 million and $7.4 million, her 2012 public financial disclosure filing shows. The couple, who said they hold the bulk of their assets in a trust, listed stocks including Pfizer Inc., ConocoPhillips, OfficeMax Inc. and Raytheon Co.
Their largest reported individual holdings were invested in the Vanguard Tax-Managed Growth and Income Fund, valued between $1 million and $5 million.