John D. Hawke, Jr.

John D. Hawke served as the United States Comptroller of the Currency from 1998-2004.

John D. Hawke, Jr., was born in New York City on June 26, 1933. He was graduated from Yale University in 1954 with a B.A. in English. From 1955 to 1957 he served on active duty with the U.S. Air Force.

After graduating in 1960 from Columbia University School of Law, Hawke was a law clerk for Judge E. Barrett Prettyman on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 1961 to 1962 he served as counsel to the Select Subcommittee on Education in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Hawke joined the Washington, D.C., law firm of Arnold & Porter as an associate in 1962 and later became a senior partner. In 1975 he left the firm to serve as general counsel to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, returning in 1978. From 1987 to 1995 he served as chairman of the firm.

From 1970 to 1987 Hawke taught courses on federal regulation of banking at the Georgetown University Law Center. He has also taught courses on bank acquisitions and financial regulation and serves as the chairman of the Board of Advisors of the Morin Center for Banking Law Studies. In 1987 Hawke served as a member of a committee of inquiry appointed by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to study the role of futures markets in connection with the stock market crash in October of that year.

The Writer

Hawke has written extensively on matters relating to the regulation of financial institutions and is the author of Commentaries on Banking Regulation, published in 1985. He was a founding member of the Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee and served on the committee until joining the Treasury Department in April 1995.

Hawke served for 3½ years as Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance. In that capacity he oversaw the development of policy and legislation in the areas of financial institutions, debt management, and capital markets.

Hawke was sworn in as the 28th Comptroller of the Currency on December 8, 1998. After serving for 10 months under a recess appointment, he was sworn in for a full five-year term as Comptroller on October 13, 1999.

Supervisory Innovation

During his term as Comptroller, Hawke has stressed the importance of the safety and soundness of national banks through such supervisory initiatives as Project Canary (an “early warning” system) and the “Supervision in the Future,” which makes extensive use of technology.

He has introduced management and budget reforms in the internal operations of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as well as programs designed to increase workplace diversity.

Also innovative was the Office's use, in 2003, of the 1863 National Bank Act to prevent the attorneys general of all 50 states from investigating and prosecuting predatory lending practices by banks and mortgage companies. Even in the face of a federal lawsuit filed by all 50 Attorneys General, the Office claimed the right to prevent the enforcement of any banking law in any state as applied to any national bank. [Elliot Spitzer "Predatory Lenders' Partner In Crime", Washington Post, Feb 14, 2008] This may have allowed the later financial collapse of the world's economies to occur.

Supervisory Structure

The disparity between the supervisory fees that state and national banks pay has been a priority during Hawke’s tenure, and he has emphasized relief from regulatory burden for national banks. His community bank initiative stresses streamlined supervision and increased outreach.

Hawke resides in Washington, D.C. He was married in 1962 to the late Marie R. Hawke and has four adult children.

References

* [http://www.occ.treas.gov/hawke.htm John D. Hawke, Jr. Comptroller of the Currency 1998 - 2004] [1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302783.html Elliot Spitzer "Predatory Lenders' Partner In Crime", Washington Post, Feb 14, 2008]