Fed's Clarida announces resignation, two weeks before terms on Fed board set to end

Fed policymaker Richard Clarida announced on Monday that he would resign from his post as Vice Chairman of the FOMC on Friday, two weeks before his term on the central bank's board of governors had originally been scheduled to end. His announcement of early resignation follows a recent increase in public scrutiny over transactions he made in late February 2020, just as global equity markets had begun to crash as the Covid-19 pandemic embroiled the globe. 

An initial public disclosure that first caught public attention last year showed Clarida had sold shares in three stock funds on 24 February. However, a more recent amendment to this disclosure showed that just three days on 27 February later he bought back one of these positions. That purchase came one day before an unscheduled announcement from Fed Chair Jerome Powell that the Fed was ready to cut interest rates to support the economy on 28 February.