Statement of Jerome H. Powell
Nominee to be a Member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Before the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs
United States Senate
March 20, 2012
Chairman Johnson, Senator Shelby and members of the Committee, I am honored and grateful to
President Obama for the privilege of appearing before this Committee today as a nominee to the
Federal Reserve Board. If I am confirmed, I will work to the best of my abilities to carry out the
responsibilities of this office.
Most of my career has been in the private sector, including close to 30 years working in the financial
markets as an attorney, an investment banker and finally as an investor. I believe that my practical
experience of the private sector and the financial markets would provide a valuable perspective in the
Federal Reserve Board’s deliberations.
I also served as Assistant Secretary and then Under Secretary of the Treasury for Finance from 1990
through 1993. Throughout that period, I worked closely with this Committee, and appeared in this room
a number of times as a witness in hearings and markups. Since I left public service in 1993, it has been
my highest aspiration to serve again. It means a great deal to me to have the possibility to do so.
My earlier service also occurred during a period of great economic turmoil. I arrived at Treasury in June
1990 at the beginning of the saving & loan cleanup. A year later we faced the insolvency of the Bank
Insurance Fund. We also faced multiple failures of large financial institutions as well as a severe “credit
crunch”, with businesses and consumers unable to get credit on affordable terms.
I was deeply involved in addressing these serial crises and in the major legislation that followed,
including the FDIC Improvements Act of 1992, or “FDICIA”. I also led the Administration’s response to a
major bidding scandal in the Treasury markets in 1991 – 92, which eventually resulted in the
Government Securities Act of 1992, as well as revisions to the Treasury’s auction rules.
Since leaving Treasury in 1993, I have remained a careful student of economic policy and events, always
with the thought that I might have the opportunity to return to public service. Like many others, over
the years I have grown increasingly concerned about our ever more unsustainable fiscal position, the
performance of our economy, and most of all our collective failure to come together around a plan of
action.
In 2010, I left the private sector with the intention of spending the rest of my career working on those
issues. Since then, I have worked full time as a Visiting Scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center, focusing
on federal and state fiscal issues. Last summer I authored a widely distributed study of operation of the
federal debt ceiling. After that, I put together a public simulation of the failure of a large, global
financial institution under the new rules of Dodd-Frank. In 2010, I also led another simulation of the
financial collapse of a large, fictitious American state, among other projects.
