U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday he was displeased with the active investing carried out by two Fed regional bank presidents and pledged the central bank’s ethics rules will be tightened after a thorough review.
“We need to make changes and we are going to do that,” Powell said at a televised press conference after the Fed’s latest policy meeting.
Though rules limiting the trading activities of Fed policymakers are somewhat stricter than those for government employees generally, the current framework is “now clearly seen as not adequate to the task of really sustaining the public’s trust.”
Asked if he still trusted Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan and Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren to do their jobs, Powell said, “In terms of having confidence and that sort of thing, I think, no one is happy. No one on the (Federal Open Market Committee) is happy to have these questions raised.”
