When Kevin Warsh was sworn in as chairman of the Federal Reserve, he touted a planned policy regime change for America’s central bank and pledged not to repeat past mistakes. Four months-plus into his tenure, Warsh finds himself in the same boat as his predecessor: sticky inflation and the need for higher interest rates. Warsh […]
Page F2From§Eachthe breakfast edition — 3 October 2026
Trump calls the Fed "hostile" for a hike, then calls the chairman who voted for it blameless.
As it ran on the front
Kevin Warsh took the oath as Federal Reserve chairman and said the regime was changing, that past mistakes would not repeat. The filing on that promise comes due every six weeks, same as always, and the first installment landed September 16: the Fed raised its interest rate target, the first hike under the new chairman, a vote the board returned unanimously.
The next day, September 17, two entries post against the same account. First: the president, who spent months telling Powell to cut rates and calling him a mistake for not doing it, declined to say the same about Warsh for raising them. Second, same day, speaking with reporters in North Carolina: the president called the Fed board "hostile" for the vote it had just taken, while holding back criticism of the one chairman who sits on that board and cast one of the votes. The board gets the hostility. The chairman who was in the room gets a pass. Run the two statements side by side and the gap is one person wide, and it is Warsh.…
…(cont) Six days later, September 23, Fed Governor Michael Barr told reporters another hike is "likely." Not a forecast from outside the building — a sitting member of the rate-setting committee that had just voted unanimously, narrating the next page before it's written. The inflation Warsh was installed to out-manage had not moved enough to let the new regime skip a meeting.
Which brings the ledger to today. Warsh is expected to raise rates again, four months and change into a tenure that opened on a pledge against repetition. The rate is going up. The criticism is not following it.
He has not been named. Whatever accounting is being done in that building, the entries are consistent: the rate moves, the chairman's name stays off the complaint, and four months into the term the only thing that has not repeated yet is the criticism.
“Trump spent a year calling the last Fed chairman a mistake for not cutting rates, put in his own guy, and the guy raised them anyway — and nothing happens to him. That tells you it was never about the rate, it was about who's sitting in the chair. Your mortgage payment doesn't care who got the loyalty pass.”
“The Fed's independent, that's the whole design, the president respects the process — wait, did he respect it with Powell? No, strike that, forget I said that. Look, inflation's sticky, the data made Warsh do it, and the president just happens to agree with the process this particular time.”
The receipts
· Fed raises interest rates in defiance of Trump from the morgue, 16 Sep 2026
· Trump spares Kevin Warsh from criticism despite Fed rate hike from the morgue, 17 Sep 2026
· Fed's Barr says future interest rate hikes 'likely' needed to tame inflation from the morgue, 23 Sep 2026
· Trump rips ‘hostile’ Fed board after interest rate hike but defends Warsh from the morgue, 17 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.