{"id":1645,"date":"2026-06-17T23:12:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T23:12:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1645"},"modified":"2026-06-17T23:12:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T23:12:25","slug":"kevin-warsh-showed-that-hes-decisively-not-trumps-sock-puppet-and-markets-didnt-like-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1645","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Warsh showed that he\u2019s decisively not Trump\u2019s \u2018sock puppet\u2019\u2014and markets didn\u2019t like it"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There was the young, spry and hawkish Warsh of 2011, a Fed governor who quit following the financial crisis out of protest over the Fed\u2019s bond-buying. But in recent months, as Warsh became favored to take over former Fed chair Jerome Powell\u2019s place, the 56-year-old took on a more dovish coloring: arguing AI was disinflationary, that growth was not to be feared and the economy could perhaps sustain some lower rates.<\/p>\n

Read more Jensen Huang on his relationship with Trump: \u2018calls me in the middle of the night\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

At his confirmation hearing, he criticized Jerome Powell\u2019s Fed, saying the rate hikes of 2021-2022 had contributed to the worst inflation in 45 years. Warsh\u2019s confirmation ended up being the most politically divided in recent history; Sen. Elizabeth Warren accused him of acting as Trump\u2019s \u201csock puppet.\u201d<\/p>\n

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But even as Warsh only laughed off those complaints, there was no real way for anyone to know who would actually show up at the new Fed chair\u2019s first press conference\u2014until 2 p.m. on Wednesday, when the Federal Reserve released its policy statement. It was a bit glib, but definitive: \u201cWe will meet our price stability objective,\u201d Warsh wrote, then repeated again and again at his press conference. Inflation has been running at roughly twice the Fed\u2019s 2% target for five years. Warsh called that unacceptable and kept saying so. \u201cThe \u2018two\u2019 is the left of the decimal point,\u201d he told reporters. \u201cFor now, \u2018zero\u2019 is to the right.\u201d<\/p>\n

To Jon Hilsenrath, the veteran former Wall Street Journal<\/em> reporter long known as the \u201cFed whisperer,\u201d that settled it. When Warsh repeated the price-stability line, and when the committee wrote it into the statement, Hilsenrath said, \u201cthat was hawkish Kevin talking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Markets agreed, and threw a little fit over it. The Fed held its benchmark rate at 3.%-3.75%, as expected, but now nine out of 18 officials pencil in at least one hike this year, and the new statement stripped out the old easing bias. The Dow fell 507 points after touching a record intraday high earlier in the day. The S&P 500 lost 1.2%, the Nasdaq 1.3%, with communications services the worst-hit sector and tech bellwethers leading the way down. Two-year Treasury yields, which track rate expectations most closely, jumped about 16 basis points to 4.21%. By the close, money markets had moved an October hike to slightly better than a coin flip, when before almost nobody would\u2019ve bet on it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s not what Wall Street\u2014or, for that matter, the president \u2014 wanted, but it\u2019s what Hilsenrath thinks Warsh wanted. \u201cIt\u2019s probably in everyone\u2019s interest in the long run if we put some speed bumps on this boom,\u201d he said, pointing to the bombastic SpaceX IPO and the \u201canimal spirits\u201d coursing through equities.<\/p>\n

Read more Sam Bankman-Fried\u2019s pardon bid faces bipartisan pushback in Congress: \u2018Keep him locked up\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

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The more dovish Warsh of last November, perhaps when he was still auditioning for the role, wrote in the Journal<\/em> that the Fed shouldn\u2019t fear that exact boom: \u201cThe Fed should abandon the dogma that inflation is caused when the economy grows too much and workers get paid too much. Inflation is caused when the government spends too much and prints too much,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

But during the press conference, Warsh struck a different tone. Asked whether AI productivity gains still gave the Fed room to cut, he deflected to one of his new task forces. On inflation there was no such hedge. The commitment to getting back to 2%, he said, is \u201cstrong, unanimous, and unambiguous\u201d\u2014-calling it \u201can important message we\u2019ve missed for five years,\u201d and one he vowed to fix.<\/p>\n

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Playing to the White House was clearly anathema for Warsh. Trump spent the past year escalating from threats to fire Powell to a full DOJ prosecution in his campaign for lower rates, and recently said Warsh should \u201cdo whatever he wants\u201d and be \u201ctotally independent.\u201d Asked if he\u2019d spoken to the president, Warsh demurred: \u201cOn the president, I don\u2019t have anything for you.\u201d In the statement, he squarely blamed rising prices on the conflict in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

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The rest of the meeting had that politicians\u2019 glint to it as Warsh cleared room to maneuver. It was less \u201cregime change\u201d and more \u201cwe\u2019ll see.\u201d He declined to submit his own dot to the Fed\u2019s rate-projection plot, though he encouraged colleagues to keep theirs. He scrapped forward guidance \u2014 \u201cI can\u2019t give you any guidance on what we\u2019re going to do next\u201d \u2014 on the idea that markets work best if they just read the data themselves rather than guessing at the Fed. And he announced five task forces to reexamine the Fed\u2019s communications, balance sheet, data sources, the labor-market effects of AI, and its inflation framework, all due by year-end. To Hilsenrath, the panels double as a stall, a way to answer hard questions with \u201cwe\u2019ve got a task force for that\u201d while he buys time.<\/p>\n

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But at the end of the day, when July rolls around, none of that is substituted for the decision itself. Warsh has built a 15-year argument on one premise\u2014that inflation is a choice, and that the Fed forfeited its credibility by pretending otherwise.<\/p>\n

Read more Biden\u2019s flip-flopping on student loan promises made borrowers increase discretionary spending, and were 7.5% more likely to default as a result<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cNow it\u2019s his choice,\u201d Hilsenrath said. \u201cHe\u2019s the guy in charge.\u201d<\/p>\n

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“That was hawkish Kevin talking,” according to the “Fed whisperer,” Jon Hilsenrath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-federal-reserve"],"yoast_head":"\nKevin Warsh showed that he\u2019s decisively not Trump\u2019s \u2018sock puppet\u2019\u2014and markets didn\u2019t like it - Cross Country Moving Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1645\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Kevin Warsh showed that he\u2019s decisively not Trump\u2019s \u2018sock puppet\u2019\u2014and markets didn\u2019t like it - 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