OAN Commentary by: Theodore R. Malloch
Thursday, December 18, 2025
President Trump is going to make his choice about who will head the Federal Reserve before the new year. The choice has narrowed down to someone with the name — Kevin.
Either one would be a vast improvement over the current Chair, “Slow Go,” Jerome Powell, whose term is up in May of 2026. Powell has by all measures done a poor job as Fed Chair and the President is very anxious to be rid of him, for good. He should resign not stick around.
It matters greatly who becomes Fed Chair for at least three reasons. Interest rates are too high, dragging the economy, growth, and the cost of everything in the wrong direction. The Fed has become a non-responsive, bloated bureaucracy that is out of touch with both markets and public policy. And thirdly, the international economy is being challenged on many sides by forces that want to see America fail. We need a King Dollar and an innovative, deregulation thinker who can guide us in this bumpy and volatile future, if America is to realize its full Trumpian trajectory. It would help if they knew banking—inside and out.
Kevin number One is a nice, always smiling guy, who is currently doing a fine job as the National Economic Council director. Trump likes him. Hassert is pleasant, a supply sider, good on television, and has a Ph.D. in economics. He worked for Alan Greenspan at the Fed years ago and spent a long time at the neocon American Enterprise Institute. He was Chairman of the (academic) Council of Economic Advisors for part of Trump’s first term. He has no real market experience, and his independence has been questioned. He frankly gives the bond market, the jitters. In the words of someone who knows him well, “Hassett has zero management experience. None. He has never managed a team larger than a graduate seminar and never been held accountable for results measured in numbers. He has never had to win over a bureaucracy; preening for a principal is a separate and less desirable thing. Fox News hits are not evidence of leadership; they are tools for announcing the decisions of others.”
In normal circumstances Hassert might be an acceptable choice.
These are not normal circumstances, and we need to and can do better.
Enter Kevin number Two. Kevin Warsh is known as Mr. Finance and is synonymous with capital markets. Notably he is backed for the Fed job by both Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent and JP Morgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon. Warsh has already benefitted from serving on the Fed Board as a Governor from 2006-11. No on the job learning necessary.
During the 2008 financial crisis Warsh acted as the central bank’s main liaison with Wall Street and its representative to the Group of Twenty. He has been an emissary to the emerging markets and to the advanced economies in Asia. He lives the international economy day in and day out. This Kevin has an economics degree from Stanford and a JD from Harvard. He served as special assistant to the White House on economic policy and as executive secretary of its National Economic Council.
Currently a Distinguished Fellow in economics at Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution, Warsh is known as a sharp thinker and more critically, an accomplished doer. He is trusted by the markets.
President Trump notably said of Warsh, “He is very, highly thought of.” Known for his years at Morgan Stanley, where he rose to become a Managing Director of mergers & acquisitions, Warsh is a true expert on the US economy, fund flows, capital markets, securities, banking, and insurance. He knows his stuff and has written extensively about the Fed and where it has gone wrong and needs to reform. He has a battle plan ready to roll out. He also understands digital assets, AI, crypto-currency, and tokenization, i.e., the future.
At the age of just 35 Warsh, nominated to the Fed by President Bush in 2006, was the youngest appointee to the Fed, ever. Larry Kudlow described him as a “hard money hawk.” His roadmap for the future is articulated in a detailed and insightful speech he gave last year to the IMF on Fed policy and independence, Look at these comments from his own pen. The Federal Reserve’s Broken Leadership – WSJ
Commanding Heights April 25, 2025, DC.pdf
Kevin Maxwell Warsh should be the preferred choice to lead the Federal Reserve Bank Board of Governors for the next term of ten tears. Trump, America, and its citizens are fortunate to have someone, willing, ready, and able to step right into the all-important job and serve.
(Views expressed by guest commentators may not reflect the views of OAN or its affiliates.)
Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, scholar-diplomat-strategist was a professor at Yale and the University of Oxford. He founded and directs the Oxford-Intellect Schools of retail, wholesale and central banking. His latest book is GREATNESS: The Trump Revolution and the Coming Golden Age for America.
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