So the bond vigilantes threw a party and sold off, spiking yields across the board 1.44% on the day, throwing down the gauntlet at Warsh, daring him to cut in the face of all the chaos Trump is causing.
The 20-year soared to 5.14%.
Yields are up 2.8% in the aggregate since the beginning of the month.
6% inflation is knocking on the door.
Inflation rate projected to hit 6% in the second quarter, top economic forecasters say
Kevin Warsh wins Senate confirmation as the next Federal Reserve chair
... In the most divisive vote ever for a Fed chair, Warsh, 56, won confirmation to take over for Jerome Powell, who has served in the top leadership position since 2018 and whose term will expire Friday.
The Senate voted 54-45 to confirm Warsh, ending a months long saga that began in the summer of 2025 and included an extensive search for Powell’s successor. The vote was almost completely along party lines, with only Pennsylvania Democrat Sen. John Fetterman crossing over to vote for Warsh, who becomes the 11th Fed chair of the modern banking era.
Powell will stay on at the Fed as he has two years left in his term as governor. ...
Fed holds rates steady but with highest level of dissent since 1992
... In what may have been Chair Jerome Powell’s final meeting at the helm, the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee voted to hold the benchmark funds rate in a range between 3.5%-3.75%. Markets had been pricing in a 100% chance of no change. ...
It wasn't much of a dissent when the vote to hold rates steady was 11-1. Three of the eleven simply disagreed that right now the Fed should say as it does in the official statement that it remains open to new information which might suggest additional rate cuts in the future, when in their opinion that sends the wrong signal when inflation remains as elevated as it is at present.
... “My decisions on these matters will continue to be guided entirely by what I believe is in the best interest of the institution and the people we serve after my term as chair ends on May 15, and will continue to serve as a governor for a period of time to be determined,” he added. ...
Stock investors fared very well under Powell. Bond investors, not so much
... the S&P 500 rallied 14.7% annually under Powell, the third best performance for Fed chairs going back to 1970, Bespoke Investment Group found. ...
“He believed in easy money. He voted for all the QEs. He voted for zero interest rates,” Boockvar said. “It’s only when inflation mugged him ... that he became more hawkish ... .”
But the problem with accommodative monetary policy is, “Easy money gets investors drunk on things, and puts beer goggles on them,” Boockvar said. ’Sometimes it ends up OK, but other times it ends up in rampant inflation.”
... The Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index that aims to track all U.S. investment-grade debt returned just under 2% annually during Powell’s tenure, far below the average of 6.5% since the 1970s, according to Bespoke. ...
Analysis: The Warsh revolution is coming. Powell won’t stand in the way.
... the only major challenge for Warsh, as far as Powell is concerned, will be driving consensus within the Fed for where to set interest rates. Wednesday’s dissents suggest that won’t be easy. But Powell, whom Warsh has described as a failed chair who chose inflation, went out of his way to say Warsh is up to the task.
The chair’s job is to “create consensus” among the Fed’s voters and to “be inside their thinking,” Powell said.
Warsh “has the capabilities, skills to be very good at that,” Powell said.
If Warsh cuts interest rates in this environment, he'll be choosing inflation, too.
Inflation is very painful for the people, but for a government which absolutely refuses to get its fiscal house in order Powell's choice of inflation was the only medicine available to him, faced as he was with a national debt snowballing toward $40 trillion and the moon after that, and desperately in need of devaluation.
Powell staying on as acting chair until Trump can get his shit together would be customary procedure, not an anomaly.
Trump threatens to fire Powell if Fed chair doesn’t leave office on his own
Fed nominee Warsh filings detail vast wealth, far exceeding past chairs
... Warsh’s filings detail roughly 1,800 individual assets. Many individual items are identified as being subject to “pre-existing confidentiality obligations” that prevent him from specifying the underlying assets.
Warsh in the filings pledges to divest these assets if confirmed. ...
Larry knows that's a lie.
He knows it's Senator Thom Tillis who is stopping Kevin Warsh from getting a Fed chair confirmation hearing, not Jerome Powell.
But he never mentions that.
Truly disgraceful.
I guess Larry wants no one in charge at the Fed when Powell's term expires on May 15.
Meanwhile Alan Greenspan remained as Fed chair in 1996 pending confirmation for his next term, which took almost four months, and Marriner Eccles stayed on as Fed chair for over two months after his term expired, and on the board of governors after that from 1948-1951. G. William Miller stayed on as Fed chair for over a month in 1978 after his term expired, and Chair Powell himself had to wait over three months in 2022 for confirmation to his second term.
But Larry doesn't mention any of that either, because he's a liar.
Powell is doing his duty while Mad King Ludwig tries to wreck everything he touches, and Larry Kudlow has become nothing but Trump's partisan hack.
The New York Sun and Real Clear Politics should be ashamed of themselves for circulating this trash.
Gold and Silver tumble as Trump’s Fed Chair pick Warsh seen as preserving central bank independence
... Claudio Wewel, FX strategist at J. Safra Sarasin Sustainable Asset Management, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday that a “perfect storm” of geopolitical tensions had helped precious metals move higher this year, pointing to the U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Washington’s threats to use military force in Greenland and Iran.
More recently, he said, speculation over who would be nominated as the next Fed chair had been influencing metal markets.
“The market has clearly been pricing the risk of a much more dovish contender, that’s been largely helping the gold price along with other precious metal prices. Over the last 24 hours, the news flow has changed a little bit,” Wewel said, prior to Trump’s announcement. ...
