First Fed Enforcement Meeting Since 2010 Follows Warren Request

By Jeff Kearns Apr 18, 2014 12:00 AM ET

The Federal Reserve Board of Governors met to consider bank enforcement actions for the first time since November 2010, after Chair Janet Yellen pledged to Senator Elizabeth Warren in February to step up the board’s involvement in bank supervisory and regulatory matters.

Yellen, in a Feb. 27 appearance before the Senate Banking Committee, agreed to a request by Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, for greater board involvement in supervision. The Fed oversees about 6,000 banks.

Yesterday’s board meeting was closed to the public, and a notice on the agenda said only that governors considered an enforcement matter and were briefed on financial markets, institutions and infrastructure. Still, the gathering represents a step toward greater transparency because board deliberations are more likely to be made public in the future than staff meetings, according to Mark Calabria, a former Senate Banking Committee aide.

“Traditionally these agreements have been hammered out between lawyers at the Fed and lawyers at the bank,” said Calabria, director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute in Washington. “It’s more transparency into what’s going on in the process because before you didn’t really know how much involvement the board really had in the conversations that go on. This should mean you have more of the board involved.”

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-17/first-fed-enforcement-meeting-since-2010-follows-warren-request.html