00:00So the Federal Reserve has long been plagued by a culture of corruption and coziness with Wall Street.
00:07Over the last five years, at least six senior Fed officials have been implicated in serious
00:14ethics scandals related to personal stock trading and self-dealing. But instead of trying to repair
00:22this broken culture, I'm concerned that you seem to be embracing it. At the time of your nomination,
00:28you owned more than $100 million worth of shares in private investment vehicles called the
00:34Juggernaut Funds and THSDFS LLC. And you refuse to disclose the underlying assets to the Senate
00:44and to the public. You say now that you've sold those shares. In other words, somebody wrote you
00:50a check for more than $100 million days before you entered office. Chair Walsh, who wrote that
00:59check? Senator Warren, this is a discussion you and I had in the public square seven weeks ago. And I'm
01:06thrilled to tell you that I have fully honored the obligations I had under the office of the
01:11agreement I had with the Office of Government Ethics. And there is continued disclosure, which
01:16I'm happy to make as consistent with the agreement. I asked you a very specific question. Who gave you
01:21$100 million right before you were sworn in? Was it a billionaire who has business with the Fed?
01:29Was it Stanley Druckenmiller, who's made billions of dollars betting on what the Fed does? Or was it a
01:36different billionaire? Who gave you the money? I will fully comply with the Office of Government
01:42Ethics. That's not an answer. Well, it is an answer, actually, Senator, because there are
01:46obligations. And I will satisfy them completely. It's $100 million that you got just before you
01:52were sworn in. And you won't tell the American people where it came from. Let's go to another
01:56incident. As you know, the Fed imposes a blackout period where senior Fed officials are prohibited from
02:03talking about economic issues with outsiders. The idea is to, quote, reinforce the public's confidence
02:10in the transparency and integrity of the monetary policy process. In other words, no one gets some
02:17special insider information from the Fed. But shortly after your first FOMC meeting as chair,
02:24right in the middle of the blackout period, the Fed's vice chair for supervision, Michelle Bowman,
02:30was reportedly the featured guest at a secret dinner hosted by Bank of America for its hedge fund
02:38and Wall Street clients. At this closed-door dinner, she reportedly spoke about both monetary policy
02:46topics and regulatory policy. Now, I've called on the inspector general to review her conduct,
02:53but you're the guy in charge. As chair, you set the tone on culture. Did vice chair Bowman provide any
03:02non-public information to the attendees at that secret dinner or discuss any regulatory policy
03:09matters that are subject to open comment periods? Senator, I agree with one of the premises of your
03:17question, which is I do set the culture. Good. After my very first week at the Fed, I sent a
03:23letter to
03:24the 21,000 people at the Fed outlining our culture. I appreciate that, but we have very limited time and
03:30a very
03:30strict chairman. So can you just answer the question about the vice chair and her secret meeting?
03:36Sure. I'm happy to, to the extent I can share it with you. The vice chair has been an excellent
03:43colleague in my first seven weeks. I'm aware of the letter you sent to the inspector general
03:48out of an enormous respect for him, his investigation, what he chooses to do with it. I'm going to leave
03:54to him to do without trying to micromanage that. And I'd be interested in the judgments that he,
03:59that he comes to. So you will support his investigation. Have you made your own investigation?
04:05Did you ask her if she spoke at a secret meeting during the blackout period?
04:09I agree with the suggestion, um, that the inspector general is an independent actor.
04:15And I'd be very interested in his decision. You just said you're the guy in charge. Did you ask her
04:21about the secret meeting that took place? Did you ask her? I can answer a simple question,
04:29which is I wasn't at the meeting. I don't know the facts, but I'd be very interested in the fact
04:35finding being done by an independent inspector general. Did you care enough to ask, how can you
04:40be chair and not ask your own vice chair whether or not she violated the blackout period, violated
04:47the law? I think it'd be inappropriate for me to prejudge facts that are being discovered by an
04:52independent actor. I don't know how you prejudge them if you don't ask. Well, I don't know how to
04:57prejudge them if I wasn't in the attendance of a meeting. Did you ask? Uh, she's been an excellent
05:02colleague. Did you ask? I've asked her a lot of things about supervision and regulation. Yeah,
05:08we've been busy doing a lot of real work over the last seven weeks. I gotta say, I'm gonna take
05:12the
05:12same time you did. I just gotta say. You hope so. The tone that you are setting is one that
05:18seems to
05:18invite corruption and that's going to be a real problem. We've had seven weeks, Senator Warren,
05:24and we've set a tone of performance, accountability, responsibility, and integrity.
Comments