People

Lev Menand

Lev Menand

Formal First Name
Lev
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Lev Menand is an Associate Professor of Law at Columbia University Law School and writes widely on legal issues surrounding the Federal Reserve. He joined the faculty at Columbia where he was previously an academic fellow and lecturer in law. A champion of reforming the monetary system, including banks, Wall Street, and the Federal Reserve, Lev’s research focuses on banking law and financial regulation, central banking, money and monetary administration, the law of regulated industries, legal theory, and the history of economic thought. During the Obama administration, Lev served as senior advisor to the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury and senior advisor to the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Institutions. He has also worked as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in both the Bank’s Supervision Group and in its Research and Statistics Group, where he helped to develop econometric models for the Federal Reserve System’s first Comprehensive Capital Assessment and Review.

Professional Experience


Academic History

EARLY CAREER

  • At the New York Fed, Lev was seconded to the Financial Stability Oversight Council, where he helped to prepare the Council’s first Financial Stability report.

  • At the Treasury, he worked on financial regulatory reform, financial sector cybersecurity, Treasury market infrastructure, and U.S. investment security.

  • He clerked for Judge Jed S. Rakoff in the Southern District of New York and Chief Judge Robert A. Katzmann on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.


PUBLICATIONS

  • He is the author of The Fed Unbound, a bestselling book that appeals to Congress to reform the U.S. economic and financial infrastructure.

  • In 2020, he co-authored a proposal, FedAccounts: Digital Dollars, for the Fed to offer to the general public the option to hold digital currency accounts at the central bank

  • The FedAccounts proposal has been endorsed by The New York Times Editorial Board, and legislation to implement it has been introduced in Congress.