(Reuters) -Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard spoke with key members of President Joe Biden’s transition team for financial oversight in January before the new administration took office and with Senator Elizabeth Warren later that month, according to her meeting calendar.
The one-hour call with Gary Gensler, now head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and other members of the “Biden-Harris Federal Reserve transition team” occurred on Jan. 8, the meeting logs showed.
The meeting was first reported by Bloomberg. The Federal Reserve also made Brainard’s calendars available to Reuters after a request.
Brainard appears to be under consideration for a promotion at the Fed to vice chair for supervision, Bloomberg reported this week. That role, a top regulatory position at the Fed tasked with overseeing the country’s largest lenders, is scheduled to open up later this fall. It is currently held by Governor Randal Quarles.
The calendars show Brainard had brief phone calls with members of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers in February and May.
Brainard had a 20-minute phone conversation with Warren, a Democratic member of the Senate Banking Committee critical of the Fed’s approach to financial regulation, on Jan. 21. She spoke with Senator Sherrod Brown, another critic of the central bank when it comes to regulations, on April 7.
The Fed governor also spoke in February with Dennis Kelleher, the chief executive of Better Markets, a nonprofit group that advocates for tougher Wall Street regulation. The group is now calling on the Biden administration to “conduct a robust, thorough, and comprehensive assessment https://bettermarkets.com/newsroom/better-markets-releases-report-should-federal-reserve-chairman-jay-powell-be-reappointed” of the candidates it considers for Fed chair, including Powell.
(Reporting By Jonnelle Marte and Ann Saphir; editing by Edward Tobin and Rosalba O’Brien)
