Kevin Warsh isn’t wasting time. The new Federal Reserve Chair, sworn in on May 22, has already assembled a roster of advisers and launched five task forces aimed at dragging the central bank’s operations into the modern era.
The appointments include Paul Winfree and Daniel Heil as temporary external advisers, brought on in early June, alongside Fed economists Daniel Covitz and Eric Engstrom, who will serve on a rotating basis.
Five task forces, one big agenda
The task forces Warsh established cover five distinct areas: communications strategy, balance sheet management, inflation measurement, data usage, and the impacts of artificial intelligence on productivity.
Start with the balance sheet. The Fed is sitting on roughly $6.7 trillion in assets, a figure that ballooned during the pandemic era of emergency lending and quantitative easing. Warsh has made clear he wants that number to come down. For context, the Fed’s balance sheet was under $4 trillion before COVID hit.
