Fed's Tarullo emerges as banks" key federal foe on regulating risk Days before the losses were announced, JPMorgan's chief executive officer, Jamie Dimon, and executives from Goldman Sachs and other banks lit into the Fed's plans to tighten oversight during a closed-door meeting with Tarullo in New York. With the executives at his sides, Tarullo sat poker-faced and largely silent. He told the titans of Wall Street that their views were just one perspective the Fed was considering. In his first public remarks since the JPMorgan debacle, Tarullo said in an interview that the surprise losses buttress the case for tough new rules forcing banks to hold more in reserve. "I think this, [and] a number of other instances and examples, reaffirms the importance of making sure that our larger institutions have a substantial amount of capital that is available to absorb losses when they come about through unexpected as well as expected means," he said. Tarullo has said that the Fed and other regulators failed to effectively regulate the biggest banks before the financial crisis, which erupted in 2008. But as he seeks to avoid repeating that mistake, he is facing fierce resistance from the banking sector - holding far more in reserve is likely to crimp bank profits and executive pay - and some skepticism from international officials and even some Fed staff members. The financial industry has spent millions of dollars on lobbying to try to shape new regulations, according to public records. Top executives, led by Dimon, have repeatedly bemoaned the impact of new financial regulations. In private meetings, Tarullo has largely refused to respond to their concerns. He is reluctant to be perceived as negotiating with the banks. The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, which overhauled financial regulation, assigned the Fed the responsibility of overseeing the largest financial firms after several massive banks required taxpayer bailouts in 2008. "He's right on the cutting edge there of going to battle with the banking industry and other countries," said Morris Goldstein, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Given that the Fed was given all that responsibility, it has a lot of power, and he's the point guy. Last month, Tarullo walked out of a gathering of international bank regulators and executives at the Canadian Embassy after a top U.S. banker criticized the Fed's new rules. Tarullo asked him to stop, because Fed rules don't allow officials to engage with executives outside of official meetings. When the executive refused, Tarullo left until the topic changed.