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Perspective Shift

You read this story from where you sit.
Want to read it from somewhere else?

We'll re-present the same story as a thoughtful proponent of the reformer-shakeup frame would. Not to convince you. To let you actually meet the argument.

Choose a vantage
Fed-independence frame
A president who openly demands rate cuts is trying to install a loyalist atop the central bank, and Warsh's diplomatic dodges and refusal to break with Trump leave the bank's autonomy genuinely at risk regardless of his pledges.
Reformer-shakeup frame
A bloated, inflation-prone Fed run by insular economists badly needs new leadership, and Warsh's credentials, critique of forward guidance, and appetite for regime change make him uniquely suited to drag the institution into the present.
Conflicts-and-disclosure frame
A nominee sitting on more than $100 million in undisclosed holdings — including opaque funds with possible ties to Trump-linked, Chinese, or Epstein-connected vehicles — cannot credibly oversee monetary and regulatory policy without first opening his books.
Retold from the other vantage
Steelman · slot B
The case for breaking the Fed's bad habits
A monetary economist skeptical of central-bank drift would argue —
The Fed missed the inflation of 2021–22 badly, runs a balance sheet still bloated from successive crises, and communicates through choreographed forward guidance that has more in common with corporate IR than monetary policy. Warsh has been making this critique on the record for years — well before any job was on offer — and his prescription is concrete: messier meetings without rehearsed scripts, a rethink of the PCE-anchored inflation framework, and a Fed that stays in its lane on price stability rather than expanding into supervisory and climate adjacencies. Productivity gains from AI and a smaller balance sheet genuinely do change the rate calculus. You don't fix an institution this insular by promoting from within it.

If this read like a fair rendering of the argument — even when you disagree — it's doing its job. Steelmen aren't aimed at persuading you; they're aimed at what the other side actually believes when they're thinking clearly.