Sen. Sherrod Brown has scheduled a Nov. 21 hearing to look into secret tapes that showed regulators at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York disagreeing over supervision of Goldman Sachs.
Brown, a populist Ohio Democrat, had been calling for congressional oversight of the incident with fellow Wall Street critic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., out of concern that the tapes revealed ongoing coziness between regulators and the banks they oversee.
In a press release Friday, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, D.-S.D., announced with Brown that the subcommittee on financial institutions headed by Brown will hold the hearing.
“The recent media reports are troubling because they raise new questions about regulators being captured by the financial institutions they regulate,” Johnson said. He lent his own approval to Brown’s hearing, saying that it is “important that the committee further examine this issue and push regulators to address concerns about regulatory capture and to improve supervision.”
“American taxpayers deserve regulators who will fight each day on their behalf, rather than cozy up to the very industry that they are meant to police,” Brown added. “The allegations brought forth by the release of the recordings regarding the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Goldman Sachs deserve a full and thorough examination.”
No witnesses for the hearing have been announced. Contacted Thursday, both the New York Fed and Goldman Sachs declined to say whether any of their employees had been called on to testify.
