Federal Reserve Governor Randal Quarles will resign at the end of December, marking the end of tenure for a key official who led the central bank’s supervisory work over the last four years.
Quarles, a Trump appointee who began his role in October 2017, will step down “during or around the last week of December of this year.”
Quarles’s resignation will leave another role open for the Biden administration to fill, as the White House continues to weigh through who it would like serving in the central bank’s top role come next February.
Quarles served as the central bank’s first ever vice chairman of supervision, a four-year role that expired on Oct. 13. The Fed clarified on that day that he would no longer head the committee tasked with supervisory and regulatory matters.
However, Quarles could remain on the Board as a Fed governor through January 2032 and suggested earlier in the year that he would consider staying at the central bank after his supervisory role lapsed.
But his resignation letter said he would leave next month “given the completion last month of my term as Vice Chairman for Supervision of the Board.”
Quarles was key in instituting a number of regulatory reforms, including a loosening of some post-financial crisis regulations put in place by the Dodd-Frank Act. As Congress passed a package deal in 2018 that sought to tailor bank regulations on community banks, Quarles expanded the regulatory relief to include some banks up to $700 billion in size.
His regulatory work was hailed by those in the industry who felt his work would free up banks to better support the economy’s credit needs, but critics accused him of creating a more dangerous financial regulatory framework that risked more bank bailouts.
Quarles was also a vocal Fed official on the central bank’s other roles, warning as of late that the Fed should be wary of rising inflationary pressures. He also expressed skepticism about the need for the Fed to launch a digital dollar.
Brian Cheung is a reporter covering the Fed, economics, and banking for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on Twitter @bcheungz.
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