Jay Powell is out; Kevin Warsh is in. On Tuesday, the Senate confirmed Donald Trump’s nominee for chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Powell’s time running the central bank will expire on Friday. For the outgoing Fed chair, it will mark the conclusion of years of abuse by the president of the United States — including being called “a stubborn mule and a stupid person” — along with being targeted in a since-dropped criminal investigation over office renovations that looked more like a pressure campaign to get Powell to slash interest rates. For Warsh, it will represent an opportunity to prove to the skeptics that he can safeguard the U.S. economy and not act as Trump’s “human sock puppet.”
Who is Kevin Warsh? The incoming Fed chief is a former investment banker who served on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from January 2006 to March 2011, when he resigned in protest over the decision to buy $600 billion in Treasury securities as part of a goal of lowering long-term interest rates (more on that later!). Known during his time in Washington as the “Federal Reserve’s chief liaison to Wall Street,” Warsh later became a partner at billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller’s family office and was named a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and a visiting scholar at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Speaking of billionaires: Warsh is the son-in-law of billionaire Trump donor and Estée Lauder Companies, Inc., heir Ronald Lauder, through his marriage to Jane Lauder. The soon-to-be Fed chair himself is worth over $100 million, making him the richest Fed chief in the history of the central bank. (In comparison, Powell is worth a paltry $19.5 million.)
