Episode Details

Jon Hartley and Randal Quarles discuss Randy’s career as a lawyer and in policy (including his time as Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Regulation) and topics such as the global financial crisis, Glass-Steagall, banking regulation, lender of last resort, Basel III, the Dodd-Frank Act, capital requirements, the potential relaxation of Treasuries in the Supplementary Leverage Ratio (SLR), deposit insurance after the Silicon Valley Bank regional banking crisis, and stablecoin regulation.

Recorded on May 29, 2025.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Randal Quarles is the Chairman and co-founder of The Cynosure Group.  Before founding Cynosure, Mr. Quarles was a long-time partner of the Carlyle Group, where he began the firm’s program of investments in the financial services industry during the 2008 financial crisis.

From October 2017 through October 2021, Mr. Quarles was Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, serving as the system’s first Vice Chairman for Supervision, charged specifically with ensuring stability of the financial sector.  He also served as the Chairman of the Financial Stability Board (“FSB”) from December 2018 until December 2021; a global body established after the Great Financial Crisis to coordinate international efforts to enhance financial stability. In both positions, he played a key role in crafting the US and international response to the economic and financial dislocations of COVID-19, successfully preventing widespread global disruption of the financial system.  As FSB Chairman, he was a regular delegate to the finance ministers’ meetings of the G-7 and G20 Groups of nations and to the Summit meetings of the G20.  As Fed Vice Chair, he was a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the body that sets monetary policy for the United States.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Quarles was Under Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, where he led the Department’s activities in financial sector and capital markets policy, including coordination of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets.

Before serving as Under Secretary, Mr. Quarles was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, where he had a key role in responding to several international crises.  Mr. Quarles was also the U.S. Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund, a member of the Air Transportation Stabilization Board, and a board representative for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. In earlier public service, he was an integral member of the Treasury team in the George H. W. Bush Administration that developed the governmental response to the savings and loan crisis.

Jon Hartley is currently a Policy Fellow at the Hoover Institution, an economics PhD Candidate at Stanford University, a Research Fellow at the UT-Austin Civitas Institute, a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP), a Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and an Affiliated Scholar at the Mercatus Center. Jon is also the host of the Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century Podcast, an official podcast of the Hoover Institution, a member of the Canadian Group of Economists, and the chair of the Economic Club of Miami.