Boston Fed President Rosengren Resigns Over REIT Trading Scandal

| Importance: 8/10 | Status: confirmed

In September 2021, Boston Federal Reserve President Eric Rosengren resigned amid a trading scandal revealing he actively traded Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and mortgage-backed securities during 2020, while the Federal Reserve was simultaneously purchasing such assets. A 2024 watchdog report found that while Rosengren’s trades were technically legal, they created a significant ‘appearance of conflict of interest’, undermining public trust in the Federal Reserve’s impartiality. Rosengren retired on September 30, 2021, citing health reasons, but the incident prompted the Federal Reserve to revise its ethics policies to prevent similar conflicts in the future.

Key Actors

Eric Rosengren Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Robert Kaplan Jerome Powell

Tags

federal-reserve trading-scandal conflict-of-interest eric-rosengren boston-fed real-estate regulatory-capture financial-ethics

Sources (3)

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