Eric Rosengren

Eric Rosengren served as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston from 2007 to 2021. He was known for his research on financial stability risks, particularly around commercial real estate and leverage in the financial system. On the FOMC, he frequently dissented to advocate for tighter policy when he perceived growing financial stability risks, even during periods of low inflation. His career ended with a controversy over personal investment disclosures showing he had traded in individual stocks and REITs while the Fed was intervening in related markets. The scandal prompted the Fed to conduct a comprehensive review of its financial disclosure and trading rules, ultimately resulting in significantly stricter ethics guidelines that prohibited individual stock ownership and active trading by senior Fed officials. Rosengren's academic output at the Boston Fed was substantial — his research on commercial real estate lending, banks' exposure to foreign assets, and the transmission of monetary policy is cited widely in macroprudential literature. He joined the Boston Fed during the financial crisis in 2007 and guided the district bank's response to both the crisis and the subsequent slow recovery. His early warnings about non-bank financial intermediaries and interest rate risk proved relevant to later financial stability discussions.