Dem
47
GOP
53
One of Donald Trump's major goals is overhauling the system of how banks are regulated. Under Joe Biden, the regulators, spread across several agencies, clamped down hard on the banks and made protecting consumers their top priority. In particular, the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under Joe Biden, Rohit Chopra, was extremely aggressive. The banks hated him. One of the first things Trump did as president was fire Chopra.
Now Trump has picked Jonathan McKernan to run what is left of the agency after Elon Musk is through defunding it. He also chose Jonathan Gould to be the comptroller of the currency and Brian Quintenz to run the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
McKernan has a bachelor's in economics from the University of Tennessee and a J.D. from Duke. After graduating, he went to work for WilmerHale, a top law firm that has a reputation for defending large corporations accused by the government of lawbreaking. He might or might not be the ideal person to run an agency that often tangles with the big banks, depending on your definition of "ideal." He later was on the board of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, so he does know something about how government works.
The Comptroller of the Currency is one of the top regulators of national banks and foreign banks operating within the U.S. He makes sure the banks are obeying the law and are not on the verge of becoming insolvent. Gould has a bachelor's degree from Princeton and a J.D. from Washington and Lee University. Until Sept. 2022, he worked for a crypto firm, Bitfury. After that, he briefly had a job in the comptroller's office. Then he switched to Jones Day, another top law firm that often defends corporate clients accused by the government of wrongdoing.
Quintenz graduated from Duke and then got an MBA from George Washington University. He worked as a congressional aide for 6 years, then started an investment firm. Barack Obama nominated him as a commissioner on the CFTC but the Senate never got around to confirming him. In 2017, Trump withdrew the nomination, but later renominated Quintenz to fill a vacancy on the Commission. He resigned in Aug. 2021 and joined a crypto firm.
On the whole, all three of them are competent and know something about the financial sector. None of them are like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who has no business being in government at all. The red flags here, however, are that two of them (McKernan and Gould) have worked for law firms that are well known for defending corporate clients accused of breaking the law. That says something about how they may view corporate malfeasance. Also, two of them (Gould and Quintenz) have worked for crypto companies. Given Trump's new-found interest in crypto, it is hard to see them clamping down on the crypto business. Indeed, that question might just have come up when they were being screened for their new jobs. (V)