Hillary Clinton embraced an ambitious proposal for reforming the Federal Reserve on Wednesday, according to a statement her campaign gave to The Washington Post.

Five of the 12 Fed officials who decide the course of monetary policy at the national level are selected by six of the nine governors that run each regional bank in the Federal Reserve system. Three of those six governors are effectively picked by the banking industry in each region. The three who don't pick the officials for the national Fed board are drawn directly from the banking industry, but they still wield considerable influence.

Leftwing reform campaigns have argued for removing the financial industry's influence in the Fed system, and that's what Clinton endorsed. "Secretary Clinton believes that the Fed needs to be more representative of America as a whole and that commonsense reforms — like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks — are long overdue," said campaign spokesman Jesse Ferguson.

This effectively puts Clinton in the same ballpark as Bernie Sanders on the issue. It also arrives the same day 111 representatives in the House and 11 senators — including Elizabeth Warren — released a letter calling for more diversity among Fed officials. Those officials are overwhelmingly white men, and the letter noted that racial minorities are disproportionately affected when the Fed prioritizes low inflation over high employment.

By Jeff Spross

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