The Fed will re-examine ethics rules after trades by two officials drew scrutiny.

The Federal Reserve is poised to overhaul the rules regarding what its officials are allowed to invest in and trade after disclosures last week showed that two of the central bank’s officials were active in markets in 2020, drawing an outcry.

Robert S. Kaplan, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and Eric Rosengren, the president of the Boston Fed, bought and sold stocks and real estate-tied assets last year.

Those transactions complied with Fed guidelines, but they involved securities that could have been affected by Fed decisions and communications during a year in which it was actively supporting a broad swathe of financial markets amid the pandemic. Policy researchers and even some former Fed employees were upset by the disclosures.

In response to the scrutiny, both regional presidents announced that they would sell their holdings and move them to cash and broad-based funds. Still, the episode highlighted that the Fed’s rules governing its officials’ financial activity — although in line with what much of the government uses, and in some cases stricter — allow for considerable individual discretion. The central bank said on Thursday that it would re-examine those policies at the direction of Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/business/economy/fed-ethics-rules-kaplan-rosengren.html