WASHINGTON, D.C. – Americans for Financial Reform and allies today rallied in front of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors to highlight Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s failure to protect the U.S. economy from major systemic threats like climate change, racial and economic inequality, excessive risk-taking from the big banks, and private equity firms extracting wealth from communities and workers across the nation. Powell has been like a zombie sleepwalking on climate chaos and inequality said advocates in zombie banker costumes at the Fed this Halloween.   

The impacts of unrestrained fossil fuel finance, growing racial and economic injustice, and Wall Street greed typified by private equity looting of American businesses and pensions, pose systemic risk to the U.S. financial system and financial regulators are allowing these risks to build. Dozens of community members attended the rally in support of stronger Wall Street regulation by the Fed and the other financial regulators. 

Ricardo Valadez, Private Equity Campaign Manager at Americans for Financial Reform, spoke at the rally and highlighted the abuses and dangers of unchecked private equity greed in our current system: “Private equity abuses exacerbate wealth, income, racial, and environmental inequality and represent a major systemic risk to the financial system. The financial regulators haven’t done nearly enough to rein in the damages, abuses, and risk-taking of private equity firms. And it’s no wonder that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell would protect Wall Street bankers and private equity looters – because he was one of them. When many private equity owned companies were in trouble during the pandemic, instead of using their trillions of dollars on hand, they looked to Powell and the Federal Reserve to quickly bail them out. The next Chair of the Fed must be committed to reining in Wall Street greed rather than deregulating and exacerbating the cycle of harm. Jerome Powell should not be renominated as Chair of the Fed.”