The Federal Reserve is now preparing an enforcement action of its own against Goldman Sachs and the bank is expected to pay a financial penalty in that case as well, The New York Times reported yesterday. The Fed is also considering an action against a former Goldman executive who worked alongside the more junior banker who received the leaked material. Unlike Goldman, the former executive plans to fight the Fed if it files a case against him, the people briefed on the matter said. The cases would reflect a broader effort at the Fed to address Wall Street misdeeds and ramp up its enforcement efforts against individual bankers. In 2015, the Fed chose to bar six bankers from the industry, twice the number in 2014. The year before that, the Fed did not take any such actions. But for the Fed, the circumstances of the looming Goldman actions are both unlikely and awkward. The leak, after all, originated at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with one of its own employees. And the junior Goldman banker who received the confidential information was a former New York Fed employee himself, illustrating the perils of the proverbial revolving door between government and Wall Street. The banker came to Goldman with a job reference from a New York Fed official.
