JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is reportedly backing former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh as the next chair of the Federal Reserve, with United States President Donald Trump saying the race has narrowed to Warsh or National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett.
Current chair Jerome Powell’s term will end on 15 May. Dimon told JPMorgan’s private conference for asset management CEOs that he agreed with Warsh’s writings, per the Financial Times.
“I think you have Kevin and Kevin. They’re both — I think the two Kevins are great,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal.
Warsh was a Fed governor from 2006 to 2011 and was previously considered for the Fed chair role in 2017, though he lost out to Powell. Hassett was an economic adviser to Trump from 2017 to 2019, and joined the second Trump administration as National Economic Council director in January.
Dimon said that Hassett is more likely to support interest rate cuts in the short term.
Trump has aggressively pushed for rate cuts, having called for Powell’s firing earlier in the year and saying last week’s 0.25% rate cut should have been at least twice as large.
According to Trump, Warsh also favours interest rate cuts. “He thinks you have to lower interest rates,” Trump said, “and so does everybody else that I’ve talked to.”
Trump said that he would want the next Fed chair to consult with him on interest rates changes, and that he believes rates should be “1% and maybe lower than that” at the end of next year. The Federal Reserve is an independent agency, and Hassett has said Trump’s opinion would have “no weight” with the Fed’s voting members if he became chair.
The Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors unanimously voted to reappoint 11 of the 12 regional central bank presidents for another five-year term last week. The Trump administration had previously floated new residency requirements for Fed presidents.
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