Jerome Powell Sold More Than a Million Dollars of Stock as the Market Was Tanking
The American Prospect
Jerome Powell Sold More Than a Million Dollars of Stock as the Market Was Tanking
Disclosure documents reveal that the spectacle of Fed officials personally trading stocks extended to the chair himself.
by Robert Kuttner
October 18, 2021
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell sold between $1 million and $5 million worth of stock from his personal account on October 1, 2020, according to disclosure forms reviewed by the Prospect. Powell’s sale of shares from a Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund has not been previously reported. This sale occurred right before the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered a significant drop.
A Fed media relations spokesperson was not available for comment. We will report on any Fed statement on Powell’s trades.
Three other senior Fed officials have faced serious criticism for making stock trades during the pandemic. Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan and Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren were compelled to take early retirements as a result of the disclosure of their trades. Fed Vice Chair Richard Clarida also came under fire for stock trading. The other trades are now the subject of investigations by the Fed’s own inspector general and the SEC.
There is no American with more insider knowledge about government policy that drives financial market movements than the chair of the Federal Reserve. And as COVID caseloads, hospitalizations, and deaths spiked last fall, the economy was in a precarious condition. October turned out to be the stock market’s worst month since March 2020, when the pandemic began.
The Dow would lose 1,600 points in October, or 6 percent of its value. (It would recoup those losses and then some in subsequent months.)
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https://prospect.org/economy/powell-sold-more-than-million-dollars-of-stock-as-market-was-tanking/
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