Who is Kevin Warsh? Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve

In his first stint at the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh came to a central bank that was about to be asked to save the world. He returns now under very different circumstances, asked to serve a notoriously fickle president who will place significant but very different demands on him.

Warsh indeed is a Fed veteran, serving during the critical period of 2006 to 2011 that led up to and ultimately through the global financial crisis and the central bank’s efforts to stabilize the economy. Appointed by President George W. Bush, Warsh was one of the youngest members ever to serve on the board of governors.

While at the Fed, Warsh played an important role in the design and implementation of emergency lending programs aimed at stabilizing credit markets. Warsh also played a key role in helping devise the myriad programs aimed at rescuing the economy. One of those programs, developed separately at the Treasury Department, became known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, developed by Neel Kashkari, who is now the Minneapolis Fed president.

However, Warsh emerged from the era as a Fed critic.

He warned that large-scale asset purchases and near-zero benchmark interest rates ran the risk of distorting markets and undermining long-term price stability. While supporting the earlier efforts, Warsh voted against the second round of Fed bond buying, a program known as quantitative easing.

Warsh has further criticized the post-financial crisis Fed with going too far in monetary policy stimulus, contending that it is helping sow the sees for further crises. In some respects, President Donald Trump is appointing a Fed chair who may be even less inclined to accommodate political pressure than Jerome Powell.

Trump cited Warsh’s extensive background in announcing his appointment to the top Fed post Friday morning. Warsh is currently a distinguished visiting fellow at Stanford University.

“On top of everything else, he is ‘central casting,’ and he will never let you down,” the president posted on Truth Social.

Warsh, is a Stanford University graduate who earned his law degree from Harvard and ultimately married into the Lauder cosmetics family. Before joining the Fed, he worked in investment banking at Morgan Stanley and served in the George W. Bush White House as a special assistant to the president for economic policy.

While positioning himself as a defender of Fed independence, Warsh also has criticized it for mission creep and told CNBC in an interview last year that the central bank needs “regime change.”

Warsh made his misgivings known about the current Fed.

“The credibility deficit lies with the incumbents that are at the Fed, in my view,” he said during that July interview….