As President Trump’s nominee for Federal Reserve chairman, Kevin Warsh’s background is of interest to all METARs.
Trump is often fixated on the media and tends to select physically attractive people in his administration. He said that Warsh is “central casting” so we can’t exclude Mr. Warsh’s handsome looks (as opposed to his drab competition for the job) as heavily influencing Trump.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/31/business/kevin-…
Kevin Warsh Has a Tough Job Ahead. It’s Not the First Time.
Mr. Warsh is known as a consensus builder, skills he will need if he is to head the Federal Reserve when President Trump is demanding rock-bottom rates.
By Sydney Ember and Colby Smith, The New York Times, Jan. 31, 2026
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After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1995, Mr. Warsh joined Morgan Stanley and worked in the bank’s mergers and acquisitions department, where he helped structure deals and advised companies “across a range of industries, including manufacturing, basic material, professional services and technology,” according to a Fed website.
Under President George W. Bush, he served as an economic policy adviser and executive secretary at the National Economic Council.
Mr. Bush nominated Mr. Warsh, then 35, to serve as a Fed governor in early 2006. Mr. Warsh cemented his reputation as a collegial and deft policymaker, especially during the financial crisis of 2008-9.
With his deep ties to Wall Street, he helped to broker the sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase and arrange the federal government’s bailout of American International Group, the insurance giant.
Mr. Warsh left the Fed in 2011, in part because he opposed the central bank’s bond purchases that were intended to lower long-term interest rates and encourage bank lending. Since then, he has worked with the billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller and served as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution… [end quote]
Warsh is going to be in a pincer between Trump’s extreme pressure to lower the fed funds rate to 1% and Warsh’s own opinions as written in the Wall Street Journal less than a year ago.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-high-cost-of-the-f…
The High Cost of the Fed’s Mission Creep
The more central bankers wander from their core mission, the more they put their independence at risk.
By Kevin Warsh, The Wall Street Journal, April 27, 2025.
Editor’s note: The following are excerpts from a speech delivered on April 25 by Kevin Warsh to the Group of Thirty and the International Monetary Fund. Mr. Warsh was a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, 2006-11, and is a distinguished fellow in economics at the Hoover Institution.
In my view, forays far afield—for all seasons and all reasons—have led to systemic errors in macroeconomic policy. The Fed has acted more as a general-purpose agency of government than a narrow central bank. Institutional drift has coincided with the Fed’s failure to satisfy an essential part of its statutory remit, price stability. It has also contributed to an explosion of federal spending. …
The Fed has been the most important buyer of U.S. Treasury and other federal debt since 2008. The Fed’s $7 trillion balance sheet is nearly an order of magnitude larger than the day I joined. It’s a proxy for the Fed’s growing imprimatur on the economy…
But when the [QE during the 2008 financial] crisis ended, the Fed never retraced its steps. I worried mightily in the summer and fall of 2010 — a time of strong growth and financial stability — that the decision to buy more Treasury bonds would involve the Fed in the messy political business of fiscal policy. QE2 was announced. I disagreed and resigned from the Fed soon after.
QE — with some fits and starts in the 2010s — has become a near-permanent feature of central bank policy. Members of Congress found it easier appropriating money knowing that the government’s financing costs would be subsidized by the central bank. The line between the central bank and the ostensible fiscal authority has grown harder to identify. …
Our constitutional republic accepts an independent central bank only if it sticks closely to its congressionally directed duty and successfully performs its tasks. We should remember that the revealed preference of the body politic is a deep distaste for inflation — and for bailouts and power grabs… [end quote]
Mr. Warsh made some definite points in this essay which he believed in strongly enough to have resigned from his job as a Federal Reserve governor.
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Warsh is an inflation hawk. He emphasizes that the Fed’s job is to maintain price stability and that the “body politic” – that is, ordinary Americans – hate inflation. He’s not likely to cut the fed funds rate if inflation is higher than the Fed’s goal.
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Warsh hates Quantitative Easing (QE) except in emergencies. He hates financial repression (a set of government policies designed to lower the real cost of public debt by artificially keeping interest rates low, forcing domestic savers and financial institutions to lend to the government cheaply), especially when the Federal Reserve is used as a tool to enable deficit spending by Congress. Warsh hates the increase in Federal Reserve assets which has enabled record government deficits while keeping long-term interest rates low.
- Warsh used the word “imprimatur.” Imprimatur means a guarantee that something is of a good standard. (Origin in the Catholic Church which is an official license by the Roman Catholic Church to print an ecclesiastical or religious book.) Warsh is saying that the market’s confidence that the Fed will buy Treasury debt with fiat money underwrites the low long-term Treasury yields. Wasrsh wants the Fed to stop doing this and force Congress to be more responsible about reducing deficit spending. (As if that will ever happen. Don’t hold your breath.) If Warsh follows through and allows the Fed’s huge book of bonds to roll off the bond market will adjust by increasing long-term Treasury bond yields. The CBO has published the breathtaking forecast of rising U.S. debt over the next 10 years.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60870
Long-term Treasury yields have been trending higher since November 2025. The three fed funds rate (overnight rate) cuts in September, October, and December 2025 caused a temporary drop in the 10 year and 30 year Treasury but they have rebounded and are still rising. This impacts many asset markets. Bond prices fall as yields rise and the bond market is larger than the stock market. Stock prices fall because bonds become competitively more attractive. Also because margin cost rises and record margin levels are driving the stock market bubble. Not to mention the housing market since mortgage rates will rise.
https://stockcharts.com/freecharts/candleglance.ht…
If Warsh sticks by his guns the markets will be upended. Several opinion writers depict Warsh as a toady to Trump or as driven by political considerations (supporting loose policy if Republicans are in office, tight if Democrats are in office). But Warsh wrote that editorial when Trump was in office.
Once confirmed, Trump cannot fire Warsh (except for cause) for the next 16 years. Will Warsh use this opportunity to steer the economy like Paul Volcker (whom he admired and met personally)? Or will he knuckle under to the slings, arrows and personal insults hurled by Trump?
Only time will tell.
Wendy