The longer it does, the more the country’s economy is at risk.

With all that’s going on in the world, oil prices rising and inflation looming, it’s easy to forget that Warsh remains sidelined at a particularly vulnerable time for the US economy.

The current Fed chair, Jerome Powell, is of course a lame duck after butting heads with the president over interest rate policy, and President Trump has been doing all he can to remove Powell even before his term ends in May.

Trump’s moves to oust Powell — including a DOJ investigation into his testimony over the pricy rehab of the Fed’s headquarters in DC — isn’t sitting well with plenty of financial types and even GOPers, who worry it’s both overblown and an affront to the central bank’s long-held role as an independent agency that controls the money supply.

Sen. Thom Tillis, a ranking Republican from North Carolina on the Banking Committee, won’t vote to move Warsh’s nomination to a full Senate vote unless the Powell probe goes away.

More From Charles Gasparino

A Tillis rep said there was no change to his position as this piece went to press.

So here we are at a stalemate with the prospect of Powell remaining in his chair for the foreseeable future.

He can wait for a replacement and lead the agency on a “pro tem” basis, while the future of monetary policy is mired in uncertainty.

The world isn’t binary, of course: you can dislike Trump’s methods to dump Powell and still see the need for him to go and get Warsh in that job the minute Powell’s term ends.

It goes beyond the economic issues that the conflict with Iran presents.

The central bank is an agency in need of reform, and if you do a little reporting on what Warsh intends to do when — or if — he gets in there, you will understand why we need him in the job ASAP.

‘Dual mandate’

The first reason is we need a Fed chair who understands the limits of the job, or at least why the agency was created in the first place back in 1913 with the Federal Reserve Act.

Congress and then-President Woodrow Wilson envisioned a central bank that helped control the country’s money supply, but with a narrow scope of duties primarily to protect the value of the dollar from the ravages of inflation and devaluation and be a lender of last resort during banking panics.

Years later, those duties were amended into something called the “dual mandate.”

The Fed on top of those duties was still required to maintain price stability (i.e., low inflation), but with an additional goal of “maximum employment.”

If you think these are competing goals, you wouldn’t be wrong.

Drawing the line between keeping inflation in check while not slowing the economy into recession isn’t easy.

Charlie Gasparino has his finger on the pulse of where business, politics and finance meet

Sign up to receive On The Money by Charlie Gasparino in your inbox every Thursday.

Thanks for signing up!

It has bedeviled just about every Fed chair since the mandate was created in the late 1970s — including Powell, maybe most of all, because his mission appeared to creep well beyond the customary bounds.

To be sure, Powell has often been dealt a tough hand.

He was chair through COVID, when the economy was shut down and money printing was necessary to prevent its collapse.

He was appointed by the president during Trump’s first term and let’s just say the two never hit it off.

For years now, the president has believed that the Powell Fed has been reluctant to cut rates in ways that make him happy, and when Trump took over for Round 2, the battle heated up again.

But Powell’s mistakes were significant and, IMHO, self-inflicted, and I’m not talking about what he said or didn’t say during those Senate hearings over the new HQ.

He sharply cut interest rates in September 2024 just weeks before the presidential election that pitted Democrat Kamala Harris against Trump.

(Powell supporters would point out he also cut after Trump won the election).

Maybe the numbers — cooling inflation and slowing growth — were on Powell’s side, but let’s just say it didn’t sit well with the economic types Trump brought to the White House when he won and saw it as political.

Then there was the mission creep that went far beyond anything Congress envisioned when it created the Fed.

Warsh himself has raised this point about the Fed, and how under Powell it doubled down on its role as a policy-making arm of the government through the use of its massive balance sheet to control interest rates and economic growth that should come from elected officials in government.

But there’s more.

Powell has vocally supported Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and Environmental Social Governance, with the Fed monitoring climate changes as risks for the economy.

That came to an end when Trump was elected and issued an executive order ending such practices in government.

But it’s hard to square Powell’s embrace of political hot potatoes (DEI has since been rendered constitutionally dubious by the Supreme Court) when he is supposed to be monitoring the money supply.

Warsh is promising to bring the Fed back to its basics.

Too bad he can’t get started like yesterday.

The post Kevin Warsh needs to be confirmed as Fed Chair in order to avoid an economic shutdown appeared first on Our Story Insight.

The latter happens to be President Trump, whose instincts are to rev the economy to 6% growth and worry about inflation later.

His instincts are also to jawbone any Fed chair to make that happen even if it means slashing interest rates to zero. 

If anyone can walk this very precarious line, it’s Kevin Warsh. 

That’s because Warsh has been preparing for this day for at least a couple of decades.

He knows the Fed has been on dangerous ground in recent years straying from its “dual mandate” to maintain low inflation while it seeks strong employment in controlling the nation’s money supply.

More From Charles Gasparino

After all the drama over Trump’s decision, it’s time not only for relief but also cele­bration. 

The first time I met Warsh was in 2008.

The economy was on the precipice.

He was a Fed governor, one of the key officials at the central bank making sure the US economy didn’t implode in a 1930s-style wipeout as the banking crisis was cascading through the financial system. 

Warsh had some government experience, but he really cut his teeth as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley, with real-world knowledge of what the financial sector means to the overall economy. 

He and Tim Geithner, the New York Fed chief who was soon to become President Obama’s Treasury secretary, working alongside President George W. Bush’s Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and then Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, saved the banking system and the economy from Armageddon by flooding the system with cheap money when it needed it most. 

What Warsh did next, in my opinion, was even more important.

Effectively, he cast himself as a Cassandra, warning that a policy that worked well in the middle of a crisis was now setting the economy up for runaway inflation, the most important concern for any Fed chair. 

Now decamped to Stanford University as an academic, he began firing off columns on the need to rein in the Fed.

He saw — and rightly criticized — Bernanke, then Janet Yellen and the current Fed chair, Jerome Powell, who was appointed during Trump 1, for continuing to juice the economy, printing money and steering longer-term interest rates lower as if they were part of the White House’s economic team. 

He took aim at the central bank’s ever-broader policy pursuits, its support of lefty social issues, stuff like Diversity Equity and Inclusion hiring practices, and Environmental, Social, Governance investing. 

This wasn’t just because DEI was illegal, and ESG was foolhardy, it was also because the Fed in taking these left turns also took its eye off the inflation ball and its mandate as the nation’s central bank. 

Charlie Gasparino has his finger on the pulse of where business, politics and finance meet

Sign up to receive On The Money by Charlie Gasparino in your inbox every Thursday.

Thanks for signing up!

By the Biden years, with Powell still in charge and still printing money, Warsh’s prognostications were an unfortunate reality.

Inflation raged to 9%, a noxious tax on the working class that doesn’t have the disposable income to speculate around its ravages with financial assets. 

Finally, Powell stopped printing money and raised rates, but the damage was done. With so much money sloshing around, prices remained elevated (as they do today), which is why Donald Trump, warts and all, would have defeated Joe Biden and did beat Biden’s equally economically illiterate vice president, Kamala Harris, in the 2024 presidential election. 

Didn’t listen to the pro 

Yes, average folks tend to look past indictments and mean tweets when stuff like food, housing and energy becomes unaffordable because the president and his policymakers didn’t listen to Kevin Warsh. 

The question is, will Trump will listen?

Warsh, once confirmed by the Senate, will take over when Powell’s term ends on May 15.

Inflation remains elevated above its target rate of 2%, but Trump wants lower rates, which makes his pick of a hawk like Warsh an odd one. 

Recall, Warsh beat out one-time Trump favorite Kevin Hassett, chief of the president’s National Economic Council, who seemed prepared to run the most accommodative Fed in years.

One reason Trump went with Warsh, I am told, is that the president listened to Wall Street and heard you can’t have a patsy at the Fed willing to inflate the economy at all costs if you want people to buy your debt, and Warsh is pretty far from a patsy. 

Plus, Warsh will meet Trump halfway.

Yes, he will address the president’s obsession for lower short-term rates that the Fed controls, but Warsh knows the real interest rates that matter are those on the 10-year Treasury, to which consumer borrowing rates are pegged and which is controlled by bond traders who hate inflation. 

With that in mind, Warsh will thread the needle, lowering short-term rates while he downsizes the Fed’s massive balance sheet, essentially taking all that extra money out of the economy to appease bond traders as he sells the central bank’s large portfolio of debt retained during Powell’s money-printing spree. 

It will keep a lid on the 10-year yield and hopefully bring inflation closer to its target rate. 

It will be a balancing act, but if anyone can do it, it’s Kevin Warsh.

The post Kevin Warsh tapped as next Fed Reserve chairman is one of Trump’s smartest moves — a partnership he needs to make work appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Investors started selling off precious metals with gold falling by as much as 10%, dropping from $5,500 an ounce to around $5,136 per ounce.

Meanwhile, silver nosedived by up to 20%, declining from $120 per ounce to around $103 per ounce.

Trump is nominating Warsh (pictured) to succeed the current central bank chief, Jerome Powell. REUTERS

Starting last year, gold and silver surged to one record high after another, fueled by investor demand for hard assets amid concerns over inflation, rising government debt and political pressure on the Fed.

Precious metals have been a safe have for investors concerned that the next Fed chair would cede to Trump’s demands to cut interest rates sharply.

News of the Warsh pick appeared to mollify those concerns.

He has a hawkish track record from his time as a Fed governor from 2006 through 2011 and is considered likely to maintain the Fed’s independence.

“Warsh came up in investment banking at Morgan Stanley, served as one of the youngest Fed governors in history, and was seriously in the room during the great financial crisis,” Dean Lyulkin, founder of The Dean’s List newsletter, told The Post.

“That pedigree is rare. It tends to produce clear signals, few surprises, and a pragmatic approach to the delicate balance between inflation and growth.”

Gold and silver prices plummeted early Friday morning after it was learned that President Trump planned to nominate Kevin Warsh as the next chair of the Federal Reserve. Xinhua/Shutterstock

“Businesses and investors should breathe easier.”

Since gold and silver are non-yielding, hard assets often used as hedges against inflation and currency debasement, higher interest rates tend to favor yield-producing assets such as bonds and cash, reducing the appeal of precious metals.

Federal prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into Powell earlier this month over his June 2025 congressional testimony about a $2.5 billion renovation of the Fed’s headquarters, issuing grand jury subpoenas tied to whether his statements were misleading.

Powell disclosed the probe in an extraordinary public statement, portraying it as retaliation for the central bank’s refusal to bow to White House pressure to cut interest rates. He warned that using law enforcement against the Fed threatened its ability to set policy based on economic data rather than politics.

The investigation sparked immediate backlash across Wall Street and global financial institutions, with central bankers and executives warning it could undermine confidence in the US financial system.

Several Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, said they would block future Fed nominations until the matter is resolved. Tillis has vowed to vote against any new nominees in the interim.

On Friday, he called Warsh “a qualified nominee with a deep understanding of monetary policy” but reiterated his stance on nominees.

“My position has not changed: I will oppose the confirmation of any Federal Reserve nominee, including for the position of Chairman, until the DOJ’s inquiry into Chairman Powell is fully and transparently resolved,” Tillis wrote on X.

The post Gold, silver plunge after news Trump will nominate Kevin Warsh as Fed chair appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Trump did not reveal his final choice to replace Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, but said he would like to keep Hassett in his current role.

“I see Kevin’s in the audience, and I just want to thank you. You were fantastic on television today,” the president said during remarks at the White House on Friday.

Former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh soared ahead in prediction markets betting on the next Fed chair Friday morning. Bloomberg via Getty Images

“I actually want to keep you where you are, if you want to know the truth.”

The odds of Warsh clinching the nomination jumped to 59% on Polymarket, while traders placed just a 15% chance that Hassett would land the job – following weeks in which markets placed better odds on Hassett.

Even current Fed Governor Christopher Waller, who has been considered a long shot, beat out the odds of a Hassett nomination with 15.6% on Polymarket. Traders also saw less than a 10% chance that BlackRock exec Rick Rieder could win the role.

Warsh also jumped to 59% odds on Kalshi, another prediction market. Hassett and Waller got 16% and 15% odds, respectively.

Trump has not set a specific date to name his pick for the next chairman. Powell’s term at the helm expires in May, though he could choose to stay on the board through 2028. He has so far declined to comment on whether he will remain a Fed governor.

On Sunday, Powell publicly shared that he’s under criminal investigation for allegedly lying during congressional testimony last summer — a stunning development that came after years of Trump blasting the chair for failing to lower interest rates quickly enough.

President Trump said Friday he would like to keep Kevin Hassett in his current role at the National Economic Council. AP

For weeks, the president has signaled he is looking at either Warsh or Hassett to replace Powell, adding that he has ruled out Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent “because he wants to stay where he is.”

Rieder and Waller have also been interviewed for the role.

Start your day with all you need to know

Morning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more.

Thanks for signing up!

While Trump said he’d like to keep Hassett in his current job, it’s not impossible for him to win the nomination.

After Fed Governor Adriana Kugler unexpectedly resigned last summer, Trump tapped Stephen Miran, then a top White House economic adviser. Miran refused to fully resign from his White House role, instead taking an unpaid leave of absence.

Addressing White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles on Friday, Trump said, “We don’t want to lose him [Hassett], Susie, but we’ll see how it all works out.”

The post Kevin Warsh soars ahead of Hassett in Polymarket, Kalshi odds on next Fed chair after Trump signal appeared first on Our Story Insight.

“It’s in the president’s hands,” is how one person close to the process of nominating the next Fed chairman put it.

Trump began meeting with other candidates this week as he zeroes in on his decision for Fed chair. Earlier in the week, he sat down with former Fed governor Kevin Warsh, an academic at Stanford. Other candidates might make their way to the Oval for similar meetings. 

Kebin Hassett is the overwhelming favorite to take the job because President Trump is obsessed with lowering short-term interest rates. Hassett is seen as a guy who will do whatever it is to push through Trump’s agenda.  Jack Forbes/NY Post Design

But the managerial class — which is closely watching Trump’s choice for obvious reasons — sees these confabs as performative as opposed to substantive.

Hassett, every CEO and corporate executive I speak to, is the overwhelming favorite to take the job because Trump is obsessed with lowering short-term interest rates, and while the office’s current occupant just cut them a bit, Trump wants them cut more. Hassett is seen as a guy who will do whatever it is to push through Trump’s agenda. 

More From Charles Gasparino

“He does it three times a day,” is how one CEO described Hassett’s cheerleading of MAGA economics as he vies for a job that is supposed to be independent from the White House.

The Fed, of course, was created by Congress to be semi-independent of the White House and politics. The president chooses the chairman subject to senate confirmation, but the term lasts four years and he can only be dismissed for “cause” like doing something illegal, or Powell would be out of there by now because he has resisted Trump’s efforts for him to cut short term interest rates more and faster.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell has resisted Trump’s efforts for him to cut short term interest rates more and faster. Xinhua/Shutterstock

The Fed is also known for its “dual mandate.” It conducts what’s known as monetary policy by increasing or decreasing the money supply through various measures including adjustments of short-term interest rates to achieve what’s known as “price stability.” The other part of the mandate involves creating as much employment that’s possible before the economy overheats and causes inflation. 

It’s not an easy balancing and it often puts the Fed and the chairman who sets the policy tone at odds with the White House as Powell has been with Trump.

The betting is Trump won’t have that issue with Hassett, currently his director of the National Economic Council. Hassett has been reliable tout of MAGA policies such as tariffs, which some say has contributed to the sticky inflation that has led to the so-called affordability crisis, and ways Trump has sought to band-aid the situation by delivering tariff bonuses to many Americans or subsidies to farmers hurt in the trade war. 

Earlier in the week, Trump interviewed former Fed governor Kevin Warsh, an academic at Stanford. REUTERS

Here’s why CEO and market types are worried about making him Fed chair: He could literally spook the bond market if traders are convinced he will keep printing money and do stuff that aid Trump’s economic plans such as massive cuts in short term rates, and ignore inflation.

That could lead to investors demanding higher rates to buy our debt, and when that happens — spiking yields on the 10-year and 30-year bonds — not only do we pay more to finance the budget deficit, it will likely lead to an economic slowdown.

Charlie Gasparino has his finger on the pulse of where business, politics and finance meet

Sign up to receive On The Money by Charlie Gasparino in your inbox every Thursday.

Thanks for signing up!

As I reported, CEOs have warned the White House that a Hassett nomination could disrupt the bond markets, and presumably that’s why Trump has held those meetings earlier in the week to show he’s triple-checking his gut on his choice to replace Powell when he retires next year.

But Trump isn’t easily swayed, and he likes what Hassett brings to the table. He’s TV ready (a big presence on my employer Fox News explaining MAGA economics) and has an accomplished resume. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and has served time in think tanks and at the Fed as an economist.

Yes he checks a lot of boxes including the one that really matters: He’s a Trump loyalist, which is why the betting markets have him as the favorite.

Could Trump surprise us all? Maybe. If he does, Wall Street will be cheering. 

The post Fed chief frontrunner Kevin Hassett will do whatever it takes to push through Trump’s MAGA-nomics appeared first on Our Story Insight.

The “Shark Tank” star is teaming up with Project Liberty founder Frank McCourt to purchase the platform’s US assets from its parent company, ByteDance, and “rebuild the platform in a way that prioritizes the privacy of its 170 million American users.” 

TikTok is facing a potential ban due to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, a law signed by President Biden that passed in Congress last April with bipartisan approval.

By midnight on January 19, the app could be removed from US based app stores unless it is divested from its parent company.

“I want to work with him [McCourt] because he’s done far more work on the algorithm, and he lets me be part of this deal so that we can buy TikTok without buying the Chinese spyware” O’Leary told “The Big Money Show” Tuesday. 

TikTok has faced controversy over it being a China-based company and for allegedly being used as spyware software for the Chinese Communist Party.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have warned about the potential national security threat TikTok allegedly poses via US phones.

Kevin O’Leary is partnering up with another investor in a bid to purchase TikTok from its parent company ByteDance. Fox Business

“The reason TikTok is about to get canceled in the United States is because of algorithms that let you spy,” O’Leary said, explaining how he and McCourt would restructure the platform so that users could decide whether to share their data with TikTok or not. Under their ownership, O’Leary argued, users that elected to share their data would get paid.

“If they do share it, and they want to monetize it, they get a piece of the advertising action. I think that’s fantastic,” he said. “We’re going to make this thing work the way the market wants it to work, and then we’re going to take it all around the world.”

If their bid to acquire the social media platform is successful, O’Leary explained  how they would change the platform to better align with US interests.

O’Leary said he and Frank McCourt want to “rebuild the platform in a way that prioritizes the privacy of its 170 million American users.”  Fox Business

Besides giving users ownership of their data and stripping out the “Chinese spyware”, the investor emphasized TikTok has the potential to grow from its current 170 million users to “past 200 million” by regaining user trust.

“We’ve got to get everybody back that doesn’t trust it, that wouldn’t put it on their phone. And the way to do that is to democratize it, allow people to invest beside us,” O’Leary said Friday on “Varney & Co,” on FOX Business.

“The third thing I think everybody’s going to find attractive, including Trump, is we’re going to open it so that it’s inter-operative. So if you’re posting on Truth Social or on X, click here to populate TikTok. Everybody would want to do that. And we would ask others, like Instagram and Meta, let’s do the same thing. Let’s share two ways,” he added.

The investor also said how he would look to get countries like India, Switzerland, France, Canada and Germany onto the platform after these changes were instituted.

“This thing will become the world’s largest television network in a matter of two years,” O’Leary said about TikTok’s growth potential.

O’Leary and McCourt’s bid will be impacted by the Supreme Court’s much anticipated ruling on the law to ban the platform unless it is divested and then ByteDance’s willingness to do so if their hand is forced before the deadline.

TikTok is set to be banned from US app stores on Jan. 19. REUTERS

The high court heard oral arguments on Friday in a fast-tracked case ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House. A final decision is expected before Inauguration Day.

O’Leary explained how a Supreme Court decision to uphold the ban would be “good news” for their bid.

Start and end your day informed with our newsletters

Morning Report and Evening Update: Your source for today’s top stories

Thanks for signing up!

“What that means is that the company goes into a binary decision as to whether to let it be shut down midnight on the 19th or engage with a buyer,” he told “America Reports” Friday on Fox News. “Now, you may be aware that we have put an offer – I think we’re the only syndicate formed that gave a viable offer last night – to ByteDance, and they may want to start considering it because there’s $30 to $40 billion worth of American shareholder’s value tied up there. And if the Supreme leader [Chinese President  Xi Jinping] wishes to, we can just shut it off as they did in India and that capital gets erased. And of course, that’s not good for future capital raising.”

O’Leary argued his and McCourt’s ambitious plans for TikTok heavily rely on Xi Jinping. 

“I think the only person that matters in this deal is the Supreme leader, who’s got to decide. All Chinese companies are controlled by him,” he said.

O’Leary went on to explain how China wants to be considered a “destination” for capital, explaining that every country needs it to grow their economy, even those in adversarial positions with the U.S. like China.

“They’re competing for the largest economy status. So if you want to be a big boy and you want to play in international markets, you don’t wipe out shareholder money. It’s not just U.S. shareholders. Every sovereign wealth fund around the world, many of them have huge investments in ByteDance,” he said.

“But it won’t be my decision or Frank McCourt’s decision. The two of us have put our syndicate out there. We’ve made the offer. Every single American shareholder has our offer. They know it. And this is really up for ByteDance to decide.”

O’Leary stressed that he thinks ByteDance should give their offer serious consideration after their free speech argument in court “fell on deaf ears.”

“We’ll make it very free speech. We’ll make it way better and we’ll make sure we abide by the order of the courts. This is the right path,” he said.

The post Kevin O’Leary explains his plan to save the platform appeared first on Our Story Insight.