What Warsh's first meeting as Fed chair signals

By — Amna Nawaz Amna Nawaz By — Azhar Merchant Azhar Merchant By — Nana Adwoa Antwi-Boasiako Nana Adwoa Antwi-Boasiako Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/what-warshs-first-meeting-as-fed-chair-signals Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Audio The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady in the first meeting led by Kevin Warsh. The decision to maintain rates for a fourth-straight meeting was supported by all 12 members of the Federal Open Market Committee, but new quarterly projections by some Fed officials anticipate a rate hike by the end of the year. Amna Nawaz discussed the future of the Fed under Warsh with David Wessel. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. Amna Nawaz: The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady today in the first meeting led by its new chairman, Kevin Warsh. The decision to maintain rates at a range of 3.5 percent to 3.75 percent for a fourth straight meeting was supported by all 12 members of the Federal Open Market Committee. But new quarterly projections by some Fed officials anticipate a rate hike by the end of the year. And Warsh made it clear that he's ready to break in a number of ways from his predecessors. Kevin Warsh, Federal Reserve Chairman: I don't share the view that was expressed a few generations ago that Federal Reserve chairmen show up at a podium like this and say, you got to choose, and you're going to have to decide whether you're willing to tolerate higher inflation to put more people at work. I don't believe in that. What I believe is, if we do our job, we can make strong growth, low prices, and strong employment mutually compatible. Amna Nawaz: For more on today's meeting and the future of the Fed under Warsh, I'm joined now by David Wessel. He's director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution. Great to see you. David Wessel, Brookings Institution: Great to see you. Amna Nawaz: So, Kevin Warsh's first press conference since becoming Fed chair. Before we dive into details, what was the headline for you? David Wessel: I think the headline was that Kevin Warsh is very confident. He didn't make any mistakes, but he's very reluctant to show anything about what he thinks about monetary policy, which, as you pointed out, nine of the 18 people who put dots on their projections, Kevin Warsh didn't, see a rate increase in the next year -- before the year's over. And that's why -- and the markets saw that. So Warsh's attempt to, we're not going to tell you what we're going to do, was kind of undermined by the fact that they have a system where the other people are telling the markets what they think that they're going to do. Amna Nawaz: Well, President Trump was asked about that possible rate hike later this year and also the decision to hold rates steady today. Here's what he