Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and a CNBC anchor sparred Wednesday over the Federal Reserve’s decision to scrap an unprecedented penalty on Wells Fargo.
In an interview with CNBC’s Sara Eisen, Warren blasted the Fed for lifting the asset cap it imposed on Wells Fargo in 2018 and urged the central bank to release its report on Wells Fargo’s conduct since then.
The Fed in 2018 banned Wells Fargo from growing its assets beyond $1.95 trillion in response to a series of sales scandals across several divisions of the bank. Along with the asset cap — the first of its kind — the company was also fined billions of dollars by federal and state agencies.
Warren said Wednesday the Fed should release its unredacted report to the Senate Banking Committee, for which she serves as the top Democrat, so the panel could decide how much Wells Fargo has truly done to get right with the law.
When Eisen responded that the report may be “hard to release” to Congress given the extensive confidential information included, Warren waved off those concerns.
“We have a great deal of experience in dealing with confidential information and not leaking it. We’ve done it before. We can certainly do our oversight responsibilities,” Warren said, adding that she wanted to see five years of the Fed’s bank examination reports on Wells Fargo.
“I want to see how the Fed made the decision it made, given that Wells Fargo continues to break the law.”
Eisen responded that critics of Wells Fargo would likely respect the support of the move from Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Michael Barr, a Biden appointee who backs tougher rules on banks and served as the Fed’s vice chair of supervision from 2022 to 2025.
She also recounted several steps Wells Fargo took to comply with the Fed asset cap, such as selling off several lines of business, spending $2 billion a year on new risk controls and overhauling their management team.
“It’s not like they were just marching in place waiting for this,” Eisen said.
Warren shot back that while Eisen was focused on “activities,” the senator was focused on whether Wells Fargo “stopped breaking the law.” She also said that each member of the Fed board — which voted unanimously to lift the penalty — should be ashamed.
“I want to be clear. Every single one of them should be embarrassed, whether they’re Democratic appointees or Republican appointees, and that’s why I want to see the bank examination reports,” Warren said.
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