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Since his appointment to Federal Reserve Chairman in 2018 Jerome Powell has been the subject of monetary policy, the printing of trillions of dollars into the US economy, and internet memes. Let’s take a look at how Powell became one of the most influential figures in Washington and his background.
Early Years and Education
Born in Washington DC in 1953 as one of six children, Powell attended Georgetown Preparatory School before earning his bachelor’s degree in politics from Princeton University in 1975. He went on to attend Georgetown University in 1979 where he was the editor-in-chief of the Georgetown Law Journal. Powell’s parents had a strong influence on his education and career, as his father was an attorney and his mother was a mathematician.
Powell’s Corporate Life
Powell followed in his father’s footsteps, moving to New York City and becoming a law clerk in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1979. He then went on to take a job with Davis Polk & Wardwell, where he worked before transitioning to Wall Street.
In 1984 Powell went into investment banking where he worked at a number of different banks including Dillion, Read and The Carlyle Group. He soon rose to become Vice President of Dillion, Read where he focused on mergers and acquisitions, financing, and merchant banking.
Powell became a managing director for Bankers Trust in 1993 but left just two years later due to a derivative trade that went sideways, causing large losses for many corporate clients, and a stain on his reputation.
After his stint in investment banking, Powell went to work for President George H. W. Bush and served as under secretary of the Treasury for domestic finance. This was Powell’s first taste of working in the government but it didn’t last long – With Bush losing the election a year later and Powell going back to Wall Street.
He served as a partner at The Carlyle Group until 2005, leaving to start his own private investment firm, Severn Capital Partners. Severn focused on specialty finance and investments in the industrial sector.
He returned to Washington in 2008 to join the Global Environment Fund, investing in, “high-growth clean energy, energy and resource efficiency, environmental, and sustainable natural resource management industries throughout the world,” according to the company’s website.
Powell Breaks The Party Line
In 2011 Barack Obama nominated Powell to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. This marked the first nomination over party lines since 1988. Powell represented an interesting way of thinking about qualitative easing and the new legislation around the too big to fail banks that caused the 2008 financial crisis. Ultimately Powell voted for more quantitative easing in September 2012 and was confirmed for a 14-year term until 2028.
Jerome Powell Sits Atop the US Financial System
Powell served on the Fed Board until 2017 when he was appointed by President Donald Trump to become Federal Reserve Chairman. While Powell possessed a high intelligence for markets and macroeconomic conditions, he was the first Fed Chairman in 40 years to hold the position and didn’t have a graduate education in economics.
Since COVID-19 and the trillions of quantitative easing pumped into the economy, Powell has become somewhat of a meme to millennials and Gen-Z traders on Wall Street. Parody accounts, gifs of him printing money, and deep fakes have taken the internet by storm and boosted the popularity of the chairman.
