Kevin Warsh, President Trump’s nominee for the next chair of the Federal Reserve, told Senate lawmakers that he believes members of the Fed should speak less frequently, pull back forward guidance, and stop telegraphing what the central bank will do before interest rate meetings.
And he did not commit to holding a press conference after every policy meeting, a practice put in place by current Chair Jerome Powell that is closely watched by investors.
What Warsh painted was a picture of a central bank that harkens back to the era of former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, when there were no press conferences and no signals ahead of time of what the Fed would do, just a statement that left investors to read the Fed’s tea leaves.
“If you ask me my true personal opinion right now, Fed chairs and other central bankers around the FOMC, they speak quite frequently,” Warsh told lawmakers during his confirmation hearing Tuesday. “I would say this, I think truth-seeking is more important than repetition. If one has a press conference, one wants to deliver some important news.”
Ever since Greenspan introduced the first post-meeting statement in the mid-1990s, the central bank’s communications have gradually increased toward greater transparency. The trend accelerated during the global financial crisis, as the Fed began using unconventional tools that required extensive public explanation.
Read more: How the Fed rate decision affects your bank accounts, loans, credit cards, and investments
Kevin Warsh testifies during his nomination hearing to be a member and chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee on Capitol Hill, in Washington Tuesday, April 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) · ASSOCIATED PRESS
The first post-meeting press conferences started on a quarterly basis with then-Chair Ben Bernanke in 2011, followed by the introduction of the so-called dot plot, or interest rate projections in 2012, and then current Chair Jerome Powell’s move in 2019 to hold press conferences after every FOMC meeting.
Matt Luzzetti, chief US economist for Deutsche Bank, wrote in a note that Warsh’s leadership could “usher in a shift in central bank communication, potentially including a break from the (post-financial crisis) trend toward ever-increasing transparency.”
Warsh noted in Tuesday’s hearing that the economy is still dealing with ripples from the inflation spike after the pandemic, in part because officials used forward guidance, which Warsh said caused them to hold forecasts longer than they should have, compounding their initial missteps from 2021 and 2022.
“The Fed tells the whole world what their dots are going to be, what their forecasts are going to be,” Warsh said. “Then they hold on to those forecasts longer than they should. I think that if the Fed were to wait until it gets into a meeting before making a decision, that incremental deliberation can keep the central bank from compounding its errors.”
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