Is Kevin Warsh Really the Fed Chair of Trump’s Dreams?

Don’t discount Warsh’s good looks. “On top of everything else, he is ‘central casting,’” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Trump’s post was otherwise a dull recital of Warsh’s résumé, suggesting that maybe there was no “everything else.” If there were, it might be that Trump enjoys forcing ambitious people to renounce their prior views. I’m convinced that he chose JD Vance (who has turned out to be a maladroit vice president) not in spite of Vance’s previously calling Trump “an idiot” and “America’s Hitler” but because of it; it demonstrated that he’d made Vance grovel.

An alternative explanation, though, is that Trump is doing this for the billionaires, who are displeased with his antics around the Fed. Billionaires don’t like inflation or regulation, and they trust only so far others who aren’t billionaires. Warsh would be the Fed’s first billionaire Fed chair. He has achieved that status not through his own efforts but through his wife, Jane Lauder, the daughter of Ronald and granddaughter of Estée. According to Forbes, she’s worth $2.7 billion, which means as long as they’re married Kevin is worth that much too. Jay Powell’s net worth is a not-inconsiderable $20 to $55 million, but Warsh would be easily the richest Fed chair in history. That he became so through a family connection conceivably increases Trump’s sympathy for him (since Trump did too).

If you’re inclined to believe, as I do, that billionaires’ opinions about how to manage the economy are (with rare exceptions) formulated by their money rather than their brains, then Wall Street is right about Warsh’s likely direction and Trump is wrong. It took Trump about a year to go from choosing Powell, in 2017, to turning against him. Lately he’s been trying to throw Powell in jail. I believe we’ll witness a similar trajectory with Warsh. Asked to choose between his president and his wealth, he’ll choose his wealth, because that’s what billionaires do. Score one for the American oligarchy.