Joe Biden, the US President sends CFTC nominations to Senate

Joe Biden the US president has an opportunity to reshape the CFTC leadership completely. This has been made possible with the addition of Summer Mesinger’s and Caroline Pham’s names to be sent for confirmation to the Senate.

The nominations of Biden to fill two seats at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has been officially submitted to the White House along with the upcoming departure of another commissioner.

The White House made an announcement on Friday that it had sent  Caroline Pham’s and Summer Mersinger’s names for confirmation to the Senate.  Caroline Pham who is the Citi Managing Director and Summer Mersinger served as Chief of Staff previously to commissioner Dawn Stump, who will be leaving the agency this year – and the Director of the Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs also. Summer and Pham will be taking the place of Commissioner Dan Berkovitz and Stump whose expiry term is on April 2023 and April 2027 respectively. 

The nominations of CFTC came the same week when the White House had officially announced that it had sent the nominations of Jerome Powell and Lael Brainard for confirmation to the Senate before they serve as the next chair as well as the vice-chair of Federal Reserve respectively. Senate’s confirmation would allow them to act as the two of the top leaders of the Fed till 2026. The US President Biden also submitted the names of Christy Goldsmith Romero and Kristin Johnson to fill up the empty seats of CFTC on Tuesday.

As of now, there will no longer be any vacancies at the agency in 2002 due to a recent shakeup in leadership and with the nominations for four CFTC commissioners, subject to the confirmation of lawmakers of the US. In September, Berkovitz announced that he was planning to leave CFTC in the month of October in order to join as general counsel of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Senate has confirmed the nomination of Rostin Behnam to take the chair of CFTC in the month of December.

And now, the Democratic Party under the leadership of the US President Joe Bide controls 50 out of 100 seats. Vice President Kamala Harris acts as a tiebreaker in the Senate if needed. A majority of vote is needed to confirm the CFTC picks of the president.

On the other hand, The White House has forwarded the four names for CFTC commissioners and it has yet to announce officially the candidates’ names to fill up the recent vacancies at the Federal Reserve. Randal Quarles one of the board members resigned from his position which will be effective as of the end of December 2021. While Richard Clarida, the current Vice President is ex[ected to leave the chair by February 2022. A recent Wednesday report from Washington Post stated that US president Joe Biden is considering Sarah Bloom Raskin, the Duke University law professor to join the group of seven governors to serve at the Fed along with economists, Lisa Cook and Phillip Jefferson. 

The US is preparing itself for digital currency!

There may be some possibility of opportunities for Biden to shake up the leadership to different government agencies that are responsible for digital asset regulation in the Securities and Exchange Commission, in the US. Elad Roisman, SEC commissioner is expected to leave the chair by the end of January and Allison Lee is expected to leave by the end of June. Few experts have united that the placement of different financial experts could have some serious impact on crypto-related policy.