Warsh Ties Himself in Knots to Please Trump. It Can’t Last

Would-be Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh dismissed concerns that President Donald Trump was trying to undermine the central bank’s independence at his Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday. Trump has weaponized the Justice Department against the central bank’s leadership and used his social media account to demand lower interest rates and lob schoolyard insults. But to hear Warsh tell it, the greater threat to independence is the Fed itself, which has supposedly lost credibility through so-called mission creep and ineptitude.

“I do not believe that independence of monetary policy is threatened when elected officials state their views on rates,” said Warsh, who was nominated by Trump in January to take over the central bank’s leadership from current chair Jerome Powell. “Fed independence is up to the Fed.”