Nick Timiraos

Could they do something completely different?

What's he going to do with the Fed staff?

Is he going to fire a bunch of economists because, you know, we really don't need all these guys anymore?

Those are some questions we're going to get answers to, not right away, but certainly as the year unfolds.

Here's how you should think about it.

You know, the Fed is like an aircraft carrier.

It can turn, but it can't turn on a dime.

There are 11 other people who are going to vote on interest rates.

Warsh is going to have to build a consensus with his colleagues, and that's going to take time.

You don't just come in and snap your fingers and everything's going to change.

So it's very possible that four years from now, when we look back at the Warsh Fed, we'll say, yeah, they did change direction, but

I would be very surprised if it's something that happens right away.

Well, we've ended one bout of uncertainty over, all right, who is Donald Trump actually going to pick to lead the place?

And now we have a new round of uncertainty, which is, how is the new chair going to settle into the job?

Powell has faced a lot of challenges in dealing with the White House and Trump during the last year.

Walsh could have it worse.

And the reason is because when Powell took the job, there wasn't any explicit expectation that he was going to try to get the president the interest rate policy the president wanted.

That wasn't a part of the conversations at all.

But it is now.

It's very explicit.