Senate panel clears three Trump financial regulatory nominees

The Senate Financial Services Committee on Thursday approved three of President Trump’s major financial regulatory nominations.

The panel voted to recommend Jelena McWilliams to be chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Marvin Goodfriend to be a governor on the Federal Reserve Board and Thomas Workman to be the Financial Stability Oversight Council member with insurance industry experience.

All three will play critical roles in the Trump administration’s efforts to rollback the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

{mosads}McWilliams, executive vice president and chief legal officer of Fifth Third Bank, was approved by voice vote, with only Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) asking to be marked down in opposition. GOP senators had high praise for McWilliams, a former Financial Services Committee staffer, while Democrats expressed concerns about her thoughts on the cause of the 2008 financial crisis.

Goodfriend, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon and a former Fed staffer, was the most polarizing nominee approved by the panel. Not one Democrat voted for him after he was excoriated during his confirmation hearing for incorrect predictions about inflation during the early years of the recovery. All Republicans voted to confirm him.

Workman, a former insurance executive and lawyer, was approved by voice vote. He’d join FSOC as it reconsiders how it identifies companies as critical enough to the financial system to trigger a crisis.

Prudential is currently the only insurance company considered systematically important by the federal government. The FSOC lifted its classification of AIG as a systemically important financial institution in September, while the Justice Department dropped its case appealing a decision that delisted MetLife.