Biden to nominate ex-Senate banking panel lawyer to senior Treasury post

[July 20, 2021]  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Joe Biden will nominate former U.S. Senate Banking Committee lawyer Graham Steele as the U.S. Treasury's top bank regulatory official, along with nominees for senior posts at the Export-Import Bank and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the administration said on Monday.

The White House said Steele, who currently directs a Stanford Graduate School of Business research initiative to promote more accountable capitalism and governance, will be nominated to serve as the Treasury's assistant secretary for financial institutions.

Steele, who served on the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco staff before joining Stanford, has more than a decade of experience working in financial regulation law and policy and previously served as chief counsel and legislative assistant to Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, who now chairs the Senate Banking Committee.
 

Some of his recent research https://www.economicliberties.us/our-work/new-money-trust/# has raised concerns about the concentration of wealth controlled by a handful of non-bank asset management firms, including BlackRock Inc, Vanguard Group and State Street Corp.

The White House also said that Judith Prior would be nominated to be first vice president of EXIM, where she now serves as a Senate-confirmed board member.

The U.S. Treasury building is seen in Washington, September 29, 2008. REUTERS/Jim Bourg/File Photo

She previously served for nearly seven years during the Obama-Biden administration at the Overseas Private Investment Corp, now known as the U.S. International Development Finance Corp, where she was vice president for external affairs.

Tamara Cofman Wittes will be nominated to be assistant administrator for the Middle East at USAID, the White House said. She is currently a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center for Middle East Policy and served at the State Department as deputy assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs from November 2009 to January 2012.

All three nominations require Senate confirmation.

(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Peter Cooney)

[© 2021 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2021 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.  Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.