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Federal Reserve will raise its benchmark overnight interest rate by 25 basis points to the 5.25%-5.50% range on July 26, according to all 106 economists polled by Reuters, with a majority still saying that will be the last increase of the current tightening cycle. A resilient economy and historically low unemployment well over a year since the Fed began one of its most aggressive rate hiking campaigns in history has repeatedly confounded analysts and investors.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Are you better off than when Jerome Powell assumed the chair of the Federal Reserve Board on Feb. 5, 2018? From the narrow viewpoint of investors, the answer would be yes.Over those eight-plus years, the central bank and the markets experienced a once-in-a-century pandemic, a near-total shutdown of major economies, and nearly an acute seizure of financial markets, followed by the biggest surge in inflation in over four decades.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.For the last few years, Jerome Powell would walk past a portrait of Arthur Burns on his way to his office, addressing him silently.I’m not going to be you.Burns, the Fed chair under Richard Nixon, embodied two failures: He allowed inflation to get out of control, and he yielded to a president who wanted lower interest rates.Powell faced both hazards—inflation and presidential pressure—and more during his eight years as chair. The Fed won broad credit for its novel pandemic response, took a share of the blame for the high prices that followed and confounded predictions by bringing inflation down without a recession.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Kevin Warsh was approved by the Senate as the next chair of the Federal Reserve on Wednesday afternoon, inheriting an economy reckoning with persistent inflation and an increasingly divided group of policymakers.The chamber confirmed him with a vote of 54-45, almost entirely along party lines. Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman was the lone crossover.The vote came just days before Jerome Powell’s term as chair expires Friday.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The Federal Reserve’s internal debate over interest rates has turned a corner. Officials are no longer arguing about when to resume cutting.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The US Federal Reserve kept its main policy rate unchanged on Wednesday as Jerome Powell presided over the rate-setting committee’s meeting for the last time. The Fed is concerned about inflation, which has exceeded its 2% target and could rise further as the supply shock caused by the war in West Asia sends prices of goods and services soaring in the US and elsewhere.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.How should you invest now that Kevin Warsh is almost certain to be the next Federal Reserve chair? The short answer: Stay the course.Warsh is headed for Senate confirmation and is likely to take over from Jerome Powell in mid-May. His first meeting leading the Federal Open Market Committee will be in June.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.At his Senate confirmation hearing last week, Kevin Warsh told lawmakers that the Federal Reserve needed a serious shaking up, with “messier meetings” and “a good family fight” at an institution that has cultivated discipline and consensus.He may be getting all of that and more.On Wednesday afternoon, the man he’s set to replace as Fed chair, Jerome Powell, announced he wouldn’t be leaving right away. Three of Powell’s colleagues delivered a pointed warning that they are in no mood to cut rates anytime soon.Every Fed chair for the past 75 years has left the central bank when his or her successor took over.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Jerome Powell held his last press conference as Federal Reserve chair on Wednesday afternoon, but said he would stay on as a Fed governor pending the conclusion of an investigation into the renovation of the Fed’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.Powell, whose term as a governor runs through early 2028, said he would keep a low profile and has no interest in acting as a shadow chair under his presumptive successor, Kevin Warsh. That may be welcome news to Warsh, given the other challenges he is likely to face, including the most fractious Federal Open Market Committee in more than 30 years.The Fed held its federal-funds rate target steady after its April 28-29 policy meeting in a range of 3.5% to 3.75%, as expected.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The Federal Reserve succession drama now comes down to a decision only Jerome Powell can make.The Justice Department said on Friday it would halt its criminal investigation of the Fed chair. Initial ambiguity about whether the probe was truly over kept the path uncertain through the weekend.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Wall Street and Washington will be watching Kevin Warsh on Tuesday for any sign he has an understanding with President Trump to cut interest rates if installed as chair of the Federal Reserve. Trump will be watching for any sign he doesn’t.The high-wire act starts before Warsh even has the job.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The Trump administration spent months demanding the Federal Reserve cut interest rates. This week, two people with close ties to the White House said waiting to move makes some sense.Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran, speaking at an economic forum in Washington, D.C., said Thursday he is reconsidering his rate cut outlook for the year, trimming his projection from four cuts to potentially three and acknowledging the inflation picture had become more complicated even before war with Iran began.The remarks came just days after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also took a slight turn from his earlier stance on monetary policy.Cuts should come eventually, Bessent said at a Washington conference, but waiting for clarity on the Iran situation makes sense.

Investors have grown accustomed to the idea that US President Donald Trump-induced shocks rarely last long, because, as the popular TACO acronym tells us, ‘Trump Always Chickens Out.’ But the American president’s decision to join Israel in starting a war with Iran has opened a geopolitical and macroeconomic Pandora’s box that may make a tidy walk-back impossible. Under the surface, financial markets are starting to take note.The ‘TACO regime’ in American stocks—under which every selloff was a buying opportunity—may be over. That thesis will now get a test after Trump postponed threatened strikes against Iranian energy infrastructure and power plants for five days, pending the outcome of what he said were talks with Iran to end the war.

From India doubling down on fertilizer imports from non-West Asia sources to the US Federal Reserve decision to pause rates, the leadership crisis at HDFC Bank and youth unemployment in India rising to a four-month high in February—here’s a compilation of this week’s news in numbers.After LPG, fertilizers are emerging as the next major pressure point for India as it navigates the fallout of the West Asia conflict. The government is looking to diversify sourcing by stepping up purchases from countries such as Indonesia, Belarus, Morocco and China, Mint reported.

First is the policy statement. A minority of officials pushed unsuccessfully in January to jettison language hinting that the next move is a cut.

conflict and disruptions to flows.IEA projects global oil supply to plunge by 8 mbpd in March. With that, an old nemesis of central banks may return: elevated inflation and muted economic growth. Every 10% rise in oil prices that persists for a year leads to 40 basis point growth in global headline inflation and a 0.1–0.2% decline in global output, estimates the IMF.Higher energy prices feed into transport and food costs, pressurizing household budgets.

Write to Shaina Mishkin at [email protected] WeekOn Monday, day 10 of the war in Iran, Gulf states cut oil output, global prices surged over $100 a barrel, and G-7 finance ministers met to discus the largest release of oil reserves ever. Iran named the late Ayatollah Khamenei’s son supreme leader. Stocks plunged, then reversed after President Trump said the war wouldn’t last “very long.” But stocks fell again as oil rose, despite the reserve release and U.S.

Kevin Warsh’s nomination to succeed Jerome Powell as US Federal Reserve chair has triggered a predictable frenzy of speculation centred on a single, narrow question: How hard will he push for interest-rate cuts? While such conjecture may be entertaining, it misses the forest for the trees. To focus solely on rate cuts is to misunderstand the Fed’s situation and the scale of the challenge awaiting its next leader.Warsh inherits an institution that, by any historical measure, is deeply fractured internally and lacks credibility externally.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Now that US President Donald Trump has chosen Kevin Warsh as his appointee to succeed Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve chair, it is time to take Warsh’s ideas seriously, if not literally. Much of the discussion about Warsh has focused on his interest-rate recommendations, which have swung with the political wind.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report showed that the unemployment rate slipped to 4.3% in January, from a prior 4.4%, as US payrolls expanded at twice the rate that economists had been expecting. While that’s great news for workers, it will make life a lot more challenging for Kevin Warsh, US President Donald Trump’s pick to become the next chair of the Federal Reserve.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The White House wants lower rates. The Federal Reserve just got a week’s worth of reasons not to deliver them at its March meeting.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. About the author: Mike Harris is the founder of Cribstone Strategic Macro and director of the Syracuse University Whitman School of Management London Program. Markets are hugely enthusiastic about what coming AI-driven growth and President Donald Trump’s pick for the next Federal Reserve chair, Kevin Warsh, might mean for the economy. But their read on the situation is too simplistic.