Beyond the Role of FOMC Policymaker: Reserve Bank CEO

"I think it is incumbent on the Main Street component of the Fed … to represent Main Street America the way it was intended in the original Federal Reserve Act. I felt that the [financial] crisis actually brought out the role of the regional Federal Reserve banks pretty extensively."

—James Bullard, President and CEO

Voice of Main Street

The Fed has three parts: Washington (Board of Governors), Wall Street (New York Fed) and Main Street (regional Fed banks). James Bullard said, “I felt that the crisis actually brought out the role of the Main Street banks pretty extensively.”

In looking back at the past 10 years, James Bullard recounted how the financial crisis demonstrated the importance of the Fed's decentralized structure that includes three distinct but complementary components: the Board of Governors in Washington, D.C.; a Federal Reserve bank in New York City, long regarded as the nation's financial capital; and 11 other regional Reserve banks to represent the voice of Main Street across the rest of the nation.¹

As the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Bullard oversees the Eighth Federal Reserve District.

"I think it is incumbent on the Main Street component of the Fed to push back against its Washington and Wall Street counterparts, to represent Main Street America the way it was intended in the original Federal Reserve Act," Bullard said. "I felt that the crisis actually brought out the role of the regional Federal Reserve banks pretty extensively."

In addition to providing crucial economic input from their respective districts as part of FOMC monetary policymaking, the Fed's regional Reserve bank presidents also serve as the CEOs for their respective institutions. Reporting to a board of directors, they are responsible for establishing the direction of their banks, achieving short- and long-term objectives, and running efficient operations.

Upon becoming president and CEO of the St. Louis Fed on April 1, 2008, Bullard went from having eight employees reporting to him as deputy director of research for monetary analysis to overseeing an institution of more than 800 employees, with headquarters in St. Louis and branch locations in Little Rock, Ark.; Louisville, Ky.; and Memphis, Tenn.

He acknowledged the importance and benefit of having a very experienced senior management team already on deck, particularly as he took over the reins amid the country’s escalating financial crisis and a time of dramatic regulatory and technological changes. "The executive team was very strong," Bullard said. "We were in pretty good shape from a management perspective, even though I was new."

Bullard and his senior team didn't want the St. Louis Fed to be simply a good institution. To improve the Bank's performance over time, they believed it should be run like a top-performing business, with a passion for excellence, innovation and service to the Federal Reserve's Eighth District.

"The basic idea was for the Bank to better understand the needs of the Federal Reserve System, as well as the environment in which the nation's central bank is operating, and then to develop our own talent or find the areas where we can contribute," Bullard said. "We have found places where we can and are able to contribute, and that has led to significant expansion here at the St. Louis Fed."

Examples of the growth, innovation and opportunities resulting from those efforts include:

• The St. Louis Fed continued to expand its support for the U.S. Treasury via the Reserve Bank’s longtime role as the official Treasury Relations and Support Office, and its 2014 designation as a "core" Reserve bank to support the Treasury via the fiscal agent consolidation (FAC). As part of the FAC, seven business lines transitioned from other Reserve banks to the St. Louis Fed.
• The St. Louis Fed's Supervision division spearheaded a multiyear Fed System-wide effort to revamp and modernize the curriculum and technology used to train examiners of community banks, leading to additional, similar programs for large financial institution examiners and consumer compliance examiners.
• The St. Louis Fed's publicly available database FRED^® (Federal Reserve Economic Data), coordinated by the Research division, enjoyed rapid growth and global recognition as it topped the half-million mark in data series in 2017.
• The St. Louis Fed's Economic Education team gained recognition as a national leader in economic education and financial literacy, surpassing 1 million enrollments in its online courses and videos for the first time in 2016.
• In 2014, the St. Louis Fed opened its Economy Museum, which includes close to 100 exhibits and has drawn visitors from across the country and around the world.

Diversity and inclusion was another early area of emphasis: One of Bullard's first actions upon becoming CEO in 2008 was to launch the St. Louis Fed's diversity and inclusion program office.

"I felt it was important to be able to recruit the workforce of the future, which I think is going to be a lot more diverse, and is already a lot more diverse, than what we’ve seen historically around the Bank," Bullard said. "In order to do that, we had to move up the learning curve as an organization and get better at our cultural competencies."

Bullard said the Bank’s most challenging areas of diversity recruitment remain the IT fields and economics. "We'd like to get better on all kinds of dimensions on this going forward," he added.

One of his top moments as CEO came in 2016 when the St. Louis Fed was designated as St. Louis' top workplace among large companies. The awards were sponsored by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and were based on employee surveys.

"I felt very gratified by that, and I felt like it said a lot about our employees and our workplace," Bullard said.

Endnote

1. For more background on the Fed’s regional structure, see Bullard, James. The U.S. Economy: A Report from Main Street, a presentation delivered in Memphis, Tenn., Feb. 18, 2010. [ back to text ]