Overview
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is one of 12 regional Reserve Banks of the Federal Reserve System. It is responsible for monetary policy, regulating banks, facilitating currency and payments, assisting the federal government financing operations and serving as the banker for the U.S. government. The New York Fed is the largest Reserve Bank in terms of assets and volume of activity and its president is the only regional Fed president with a permanent seat on the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets monetary policy.
The New York Fed oversees some of the largest banks. Its jurisdiction spans New York state, 12 northern counties of New Jersey, Fairfield County, Conn., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The bank's vault at its Lower Manhattan headquarters houses the world's largest accumulation of gold. It has a regional office in East Rutherford, N.J.
Denis Hughes, New York state's AFL-CIO president who had been on the bank's board since 2004, was recently appointed its chairman, a move seen as largely symbolic. Chief executive and president William C. Dudley was a partner and managing director of the Goldman Sachs Group Inc., where he was the firm's chief economist for a decade.
A recent reorganization of the central bank has centered more power in its Washington offices and less in its 12 district banks, which have been criticized as too close to the institutions they regulate. Instead of the regional Fed banks looking at banks on an individualized basis, bank supervisors have teamed with economists to examine the flow of risks through the financial system. "Horizontal reviews" led by Washington-based employees compare risks across banks to test their assumptions.
Recruiting
The New York Fed wants to hire up to 50 more people in its bank supervision department, many of them risk managers. One must-have: civic duty in their blood.
In the Fed's employee culture, bank examiners have been viewed as “second-class citizens to the Brahmins shaping monetary policy at the Fed,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Bank examiners, whose annual salaries range from about $40,000 to $140,000, may spend several weeks a year on the road, traveling to banks, inspecting records in conference rooms. They act as government-paid consultants, poring over loan portfolios and assembling spreadsheets of bank asset quality, helping banks identify and correct portfolio risks.
As the debate rages over the Fed's future role, some central bank employees are concerned about losing jobs or getting transferred. What's more, the Senate Banking Committee is weighing whether to give the central bank's job of supervising smaller banks to another regulator.
Applicants may want to take advantage of the public tour of the New York Fed to get a look inside the bank before their interview. A robbery of the bank was part of the plot of the Bruce Willis movie "Die Hard: With a Vengeance."
Among the bank's generous employee benefits: fitness centers at its Manhattan, East Rutherford, N.J., and Buffalo, N.Y., locations, and onsite medical staff at its Manhattan and East Rutherford offices.