Economics

Powell’s Fed Sway to Widen in Trump Era of Less Dodd-Frank Rules

  • Ex-Carlyle official seen as foundation for Fed’s future
  • Critics fault Powell for not doing more to resist regulation

Jerome Powell.

Photographer: T.J. Kirkpatrick/Bloomberg
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In some ways, it was rehearsal for the 2008-09 financial crisis. An investment bank was in trouble. Policy makers were working intensely on a Sunday. The aim: avoid the collapse of a big Wall Street firm when the financial markets reopened.

In the midst of it was Jerome Powell, then an assistant U.S. Treasury secretary who’s now the Federal Reserve’s lowest-profile governor.