(Bill Clark/Pool via Reuters)
Sarah Bloom Raskin withdrew her nomination for the Federal Reserve Board Monday after centrist Senator Joe Manchin declared his opposition, denying her the crucial vote required for her confirmation in the evenly-split chamber.
In her letter to President Biden, obtained by The New Yorker, she said that “my frank public discussion of climate change and the economic costs associated with it” was not received well by the GOP members of the Senate Banking Committee.
“It was—and is—my considered view that the perils of climate change must be added to the list of serious risks that the Federal Reserve considers as it works to ensure the stability and resiliency of our economy and financial system,” she added.
Manchin’s skepticism and eventual rejection of Bloom Raskin stemmed from similar statements she had made in the past about embracing alternative energy to address the specter of climate change. Manchin, who hails from the more politically moderate West Virginia, refused to support her nomination because she “failed to satisfactorily address my concerns about the critical importance of financing an all-of-the-above energy policy to meet our nation’s critical energy needs.” He currently serves as the Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Bloom Raskin had written in September that regulators should “ask themselves how their existing instruments can be used to incentivize a rapid, orderly, and just transition away from high-emission and biodiversity-destroying investments,” The New Yorker noted. She had long advocated for the usage of financial regulation to enact climate policy.
In a January 2021 Financial Times article, she argued that “this is the time for the US to use its financial regulatory apparatus . . . to support and guide the market’s need for a reassessment of asset values.” She signaled that she supported augmenting the role and power of U.S. financial agencies and central bankers to “lend the strength of their diverse mandates in solving overlapping economic, health and climate crises.”
Other writings from Bloom Raskin suggested that she had a transformative vision for the Fed and government intervention in the U.S. economy. In a column published in September 2021 by Project Syndicate, she wrote, “financial regulators must reimagine their own role so that they can play their part in the broader reimagining of the economy.”
Bloom Raskin’s prospects for confirmation were all but dead after Senator Susan Collins indicated her opposition on Monday as well, extinguishing the small chance that she could find a replacement vote for Manchin’s with a swing Republican.
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