# Kevin Warsh Federal Reserve Chair since his swearing-in on May 22, 2026, succeeding [[Jerome Powell]] (whose chair term expired May 15; Powell served as chair pro tempore in the interim). A former Fed governor (2006–2011, the youngest in history when appointed) and longtime Powell critic, Warsh spent years auditioning for the job in op-eds attacking the Fed's balance sheet and inflation record before [[Donald Trump]] selected him. The KB question hanging over his chairmanship: whether he operates as an independent central banker or as the delivery mechanism for Trump's demanded rate cuts — with the added structural oddity that Powell remains on the Board of Governors watching, and that four FOMC members dissented at the final pre-Warsh meeting. The [[Federal Funds Rate]] page tracks the policy record. ## Sintra debut: "prices are too high" (July 1, 2026) Warsh made his first major international appearance as chair on a panel at the [[European Central Bank]]'s Forum on Central Banking in Sintra, Portugal, alongside the ECB's Christine Lagarde and the Bank of England's Andrew Bailey. > [!quote] We've all looked around, and we've seen that prices are too high. > — Kevin Warsh, ECB Forum on Central Banking, Sintra, July 1, 2026 (CNBC). With U.S. inflation running above 4% — driven partly by the oil shock from the disrupted [[Strait of Hormuz]] after the [[Iran War 2026]] — Warsh reaffirmed the Fed's 2% inflation goal but pointedly **declined to signal** what the Fed would do at its late-July meeting, telling the audience the Fed would no longer telegraph its moves in advance. That refusal to promise the cuts [[Donald Trump]] has demanded, combined with talk of a possible rate *hike* later in 2026, was widely read as friction with the White House. Warsh also noted that near-term inflation risks "have come down" in recent weeks — a hedge that complicates any simple hawkish-vs-dovish reading of the new chair.