Jerome Powell

Jerome Powell, Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Jerome H. Powell (born February 4, 1953) is an American attorney and investment banker who has served as the 16th Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System since February 5, 2018. Appointed to the Federal Reserve Board in 2012 by President Barack Obama, Powell was nominated to the chairmanship by President Donald Trump on November 2, 2017, and confirmed by the Senate on January 23, 2018, succeeding Janet Yellen. President Joe Biden re-nominated him in November 2021, with Senate confirmation on May 12, 2022, for a second term ending May 15, 2026. Prior to these roles, Powell earned an A.B. in politics from Princeton University in 1975 and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1979, practiced law, worked as an investment banker at Dillon, Read & Co., served as Assistant Secretary and Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance from 1990 to 1993 under President George H. W. Bush, and was a partner at The Carlyle Group from 1997 to 2005. As Chair, Powell has overseen the Federal Reserve's monetary policy during the COVID-19 pandemic, including large-scale asset purchases and near-zero interest rates to support economic recovery, followed by a series of rate hikes from March 2022 to July 2023 that raised the federal funds rate from near zero to 5.25–5.50 percent amid inflation peaking at 9.1 percent in June 2022, driven in part by post-pandemic supply disruptions and fiscal stimulus. His initial characterization of inflation as likely transitory has faced scrutiny for contributing to delayed tightening, though subsequent hikes correlated with inflation's decline toward the Fed's 2 percent target by 2024.