WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank has made regulatory mistakes on his watch and he holds himself accountable for addressing them.
"I've been chairing the board for five-plus years now, and I fully recognize that we made mistakes," Powell said, nodding to the
Powell addressed the failures and
Powell said he played no role in compiling Barr's report, but its findings were "persuasive." He said he fully agreed with the conclusions that regulatory policy and supervisory practices at the central bank were insufficient, and added that he would support whatever changes are needed to address those shortcomings.
"What our job is now is to identify those things and implement them, and that's kind of the only thing I care about," Powell said. "I feel like I am accountable for doing everything we can to make sure that that happens."
The resolution of First Republic Bank, which was seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and sold to JPMorgan over the weekend, "draws a line under" the period of severe stress related to the ongoing banking crisis, Powell said. He noted that the three most impacted banks — Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic — have all been dealt with.
Moving forward, he said, the Fed will monitor credit standards at small and medium-size banks to determine how much the crisis will impact the availability to households. Previously, Powell said the resulting tightening had the cumulative impact of a roughly 25 basis point increase to the Fed's funds rate, but he said it was impossible to determine with precision.
Powell did not offer specific policy recommendations in response to the report, saying that Barr will take the lead on that effort.
During the press conference, Powell explained his relationship with the vice chair for supervision, a position created by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 to be the Fed's point person on matters of regulation. Powell said it has not been a matter of "complete deference" to Barr or his predecessor Randal Quarles, noting that he will share his view on matters. But, ultimately, the person in that position gets to set the agenda and has "sole authority" over supervision.
"I respect the authority that Congress has conferred on that person, including working with Vice Chair Barr and his predecessor," Powell said. "I think that's the way it's supposed to work, and that's appropriate. I believe that's what the law requires."
In the wake of the failures, Quarles and the regulatory
When asked whether he had any regrets about policy choices the Fed has made under his tenure as chair in light of the recent bank failures, Powell said, "I have a few." But he added that he is focused on what lies ahead.
"What we control now is: make a fair assessment, learn the right lessons, figure out what the fixes are and implement them," he said. "Vice Chair Barr's report is an excellent first step in that, but we've got to follow through."
Powell brushed off concerns that the failure of Silicon Valley Bank — which was triggered, in part, by the bank's unhedged interest rate risk exposure — presented a conflict between the Fed's monetary and supervisory responsibilities.
"In this particular case, the monetary policy tools and the financial stability tools are not in conflict, but they're working well together," he said. "We've used our financial stability tools to support banks through our lending facilities and, at the same time, we've been able to use our monetary policy tools to foster maximum employment and price stability."
When pressed, Powell downplayed the significance of a staff presentation on February 14 that noted Silicon Valley Bank's lack of hedges as part of a broader assessment of unrealized losses in the banking system. He said the presentation, which mentioned Silicon Valley briefly, did not cast the situation as "urgent or alarming" but rather as an information outlay of a matter being addressed by supervisory staff. He said the prospect of a bank run was never discussed.
Yet, Powell added, much about the Silicon Valley Bank run played against historic norms and expectations.
"This run on Silicon Valley Bank was out of keeping with the speed of runs through history, and that now needs to be reflected, in some way, in regulation and supervision," he said. "We know now that it's possible."
Each of the three failed banks has been taken over by the FDIC and sold — at least in part — to another bank. Powell described this consolidation as part of a decades-long dwindling of the number of banks in the U.S. He said the Fed's policy is generally not to support this trend, especially when it enlarges banks already deemed too-big-to-fail, but in the case of JPMorgan buying First Republic, it was necessary.
"It's probably a good policy that we don't want the largest banks doing big acquisitions. That is the policy and this is an exception for a failing bank, and I think it's actually a good outcome for the banking system," Powell said. "It also would have been a good outcome for the banking system had one of the regional banks bought this company, and that could have been the outcome. But, ultimately, we have to follow the law in our agencies and the law is it goes to the least-cost bidder."
The Fed increased its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point during the meeting, its tenth hike in as many meetings. The target range for the federal funds rate now stands between 5% and 5.25%.
Powell indicated that the Fed would pause rate hikes going forward to allow time for the economy to fully absorb the fastest tightening of monetary policy in more than 30 years. The agency began raising the rates from zero last March and at one point implemented four 75 basis point hikes in a row.
For several months, some economists and analysts have urged the Fed to temper its aggressive rate-hiking campaign over concerns about financial stability. Many of those observers see the failure of Silicon Valley Bank — an outcome driven, in part, by the bank's inability to hedge its interest rate risk exposures — as a sign that the pockets of the banking system had reached a breaking point.
The Fed does not see it that way. Even after the failure of First Republic, the committee noted that the U.S. banking industry is "sound and resilient."
