Biden Picks N.Y. Fed Official for Treasury Financial Markets Job
Biden Picks N.Y. Fed Official for Treasury Financial Markets Job
(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden will nominate Joshua Frost, a longtime Federal Reserve Bank of New York official, to serve as the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for financial markets -- a point person on debt management and market oversight and regulation.
Biden announced his pick for the job in a statement Tuesday. Frost, who’s been working at the Treasury this year as deputy assistant secretary for financial markets, would need to be confirmed by the Senate to take office in the new role.
Frost could play a central role in an ongoing review of the $22 trillion Treasury securities market that was triggered by its brief but alarming meltdown at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020.
The undersecretary for domestic finance, Nellie Liang, who would be Frost’s boss, signaled her interest in potential reforms to the Treasuries market’s structure before she joined the department early this year. An outside panel of experts led by former Secretary Timothy Geithner also recommended reforms in a recent report.
Secretary Janet Yellen in March set an examination of vulnerabilities in the market as one of three priorities for the Financial Stability Oversight Council this year.
Frost, who joined the New York Fed in 1998, helped oversee the implementation of the Fed’s early 2010s quantitative easing policy -- buying hundreds of billions of dollars of Treasury securities to keep interest rates low and try to spur a recovery following the global financial crisis.
Pandemic Response
He also served as the co-chair of the Fed committee created by the Dodd-Frank Act to supervise large financial institutions, and oversaw the two corporate credit facilities created to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.
Frost would lead an office of roughly 50 employees and advise Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on global finance, financial markets, and financial regulation matters. The position engages with the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, which offers recommendations and observations on the strength of the economy and technical debt-management issues to the government.
If confirmed, Frost will be the first person to hold the assistant secretary post since the Obama administration. Former President Donald Trump’s nominee for the job -- Treasury official Kipp Kranbuhl -- was never confirmed by the Senate, though Seth Carpenter, now Morgan Stanley global chief economist, and Daleep Singh, now a New York Fed official, both served in the role in an acting capacity. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler held the post during the Clinton administration.
Frost’s nomination will come as the Treasury seeks to fill a number of key leadership roles. The Biden administration has still not named an undersecretary for international affairs, after economist Heidi Crebo-Rediker was dropped from consideration, while other nominees await Senate confirmation.
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