Financial Disclosures Show Federal Reserve Is Run by Millionaires

There are an awful lot of millionaires at the Federal Reserve.

Financial disclosure forms released Tuesday show that all seven current members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors have assets worth more than $1 million.

Ben Bernanke, the current chairman, might wield more power than his colleagues, but he's at the low end of the wealth list with assets between $1.1 million and $2.3 million. The report shows that Bernanke is carrying a mortgage of between $500,000 and $1,000,000 on his home.

In addition to his government salary, the Fed chief also hauled in some significant income from textbook sales, including more than $100,000 in royalties from publisher McGraw-Hill.

The disclosure forms, posted by the Wall Street Journal, use broad monetary ranges to value assets, making a more precise accounting impossible.

Deputy Janet Yellen, considered a frontrunner to replace Bernanke as the next Fed chairman, has considerably more assets than her boss.

Her disclosure form lists between $4.8 million and $13.2 million of assets. Most are held in a trust held jointly with her husband and Nobel-winning economist George Akerlof. Yellen's portfolio includes retirement accounts and funds from her days at the University of California, in additional to some individual shares in companies like Pfizer and OfficeMax.

The economist also has the quirkiest asset of the group: a stamp collection worth between $15,000 and $50,000.



The collection is not the only oddity reported by Fed officials. Financial statements released from 2010 show Dallas Fed president Richard Fisher owned more than 7,000 acres of land, $1 million in gold and as much as $250,000 in uranium.

The other frontrunner to succeed Bernanke, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, has not been required to complete a disclosure form since leaving the government. But the former White House adviser's most recent filing, made in 2009, showed a range of assets worth between $17 million and $39 million, according to Bloomberg.

Jerome Powell, a former private equity heavyweight, appears to have the biggest bankroll of current Fed governors. The former Carlyle Group partner had a top-end estimate of nearly $50 million.

The remaining governors -- Jeremy Stein, Elizabeth Duke, Sarah Bloom Raskin and Daniel Tarullo -- all posted disclosure forms indicating wealth of at least $1 million, but no more than $12 million.