Kevin Warsh Is an Interest-Rate Hawk—Or Is He?
Cue the bankers’ equivalent of white smoke: Donald Trump has finally named his pick to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve. This morning, Trump announced that he will nominate Kevin Warsh, a former Wall Street banker and Fed governor, to lead America’s central bank. Unlike some of the other contenders for the job, Warsh does not have a track record as an avowed Trump loyalist. For that reason, the response to his nomination from mainstream figures has been mostly positive. “Kevin Warsh is well above the bar on both substance and independence to be Chair of the Federal Reserve,” Jason Furman, who served as the chair of Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, posted on X. But Warsh’s record raises the possibility that he is a partisan actor whose views on monetary policy are shaped less by real economic conditions than by whether a Democrat or Republican is in power. Trump has not been shy about what he wants in a Fed chair: someone who will lower interest rates. He has constantly attacked …