BroadChain News, April 24, 10:00 AM, Kevin Warsh's financial disclosure documents were made public ahead of his hearing, dated April 21, 2026. His investment portfolio is valued at over $130 million, making him the wealthiest Federal Reserve Chair in history if confirmed. Holdings include positions in DeFi lending protocol Compound, derivatives platforms dYdX and Lighter, as well as direct stakes in four public blockchains: Solana, Optimism, Blast, and Zero Gravity. This marks the first public appearance of a Trump-nominated Fed Chair, signaling his return to the policy center after a 15-year hiatus.
The market is more focused on how Warsh will address the three major challenges he has set for himself during his remaining term. During his tenure as a Fed Governor from 2006 to 2011, Warsh was known for prioritizing inflation. At the peak of the financial crisis, when unemployment exceeded 10%, he issued 13 public warnings about inflation risks at FOMC meetings. In 2010, he strongly opposed the second round of quantitative easing, and in 2011, he resigned due to his opposition to unlimited asset purchases. However, his stance shifted in 2025: in May, he publicly stated that "AI will make everything cheaper," and in November, he defined AI as a major deflationary force in a Wall Street Journal column. From late 2025 to early 2026, he repeatedly emphasized that AI is "the most productive wave of our lifetime" and bluntly stated that if the Fed waits for official data to confirm productivity gains before acting, it will be "too late."
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren attacked him during the hearing for his "flip-flop" stance, accusing him of pandering to Trump. Warsh cited the example of Greenspan in the 1990s in response: from 1995 to 2000, U.S. nonfarm labor productivity grew at an average annual rate of 2.5%, nearly double the 1.4% rate of the previous eight years; average hourly wages in the nonfinancial corporate sector grew at 3.5%. At that time, the labor market was extremely tight, with unemployment hitting multi-decade lows, but core inflation remained stable below 2%. Greenspan chose not to rush into tightening policy, ultimately achieving a balance between economic growth and price stability. Warsh believes the same applies now: AI is this era's internet.
However, this judgment faces real-world pressure. In March 2026, the CPI rose 3.3% year-over-year, up from 2.4% in February, marking the highest level since May 2024; core CPI rose 2.6% year-over-year. The situation in Iran pushed up energy prices, with gasoline prices rising 18.9% month-over-month and fuel oil rising 44.2%, directly causing the largest monthly increase in overall inflation since June 2022. Warsh acknowledged during the hearing that the current inflation data "still has work to do," but refused to provide any specific interest rate path or timeline.
At the start of the hearing, Warren used the word "puppet" and cited Trump's social media post from last week: "Kevin will lower interest rates once he takes office." She repeatedly pressed Warsh on whether he had promised a specific interest rate path and whether he could withstand White House pressure to cut rates if inflation rises again. Warsh responded that the president had never, in any conversation, asked him to preset, promise, or commit to any interest rate decision, and he would not make such commitments. He stated that independence is not a firewall automatically granted by law but is earned by the Fed through maintaining price stability and avoiding overstepping boundaries. If the Fed continues to make mistakes and overstep, public and political scrutiny will be a reasonable cost, and independence will be eroded from within; political pressure is merely an external factor. He argued that the inflation of 2021-2022 was not simply a misjudgment but the result of the Fed using its credibility to endorse fiscal expansion and actively blurring the boundaries between monetary and fiscal policy. This, he said, is the true crisis of independence—not caused by Trump, but by the Fed itself.