Scott Horsley

It looks like it's going to cost more like $2.5 billion.

Now, the Fed says that's largely because they discovered some unexpected problems, more asbestos than they thought they were going to have.

There's water under the building they have to deal with.

It's just turned into a bigger construction project.

The other thing is that the estimates were done in 2019, and in the years since then, building costs of all kinds have gone up a lot.

So it is costing a lot more money than they expected to pay when they started.

And Jerome Powell was grilled about that before a Senate committee last year.

And the DOJ is ostensibly investigating discrepancies between what Jerome Powell said during that Senate hearing and what the records show about the renovation project.

But again, Powell himself has said that's all just a pretext.

This is a way to try to bully and intimidate the Fed into doing the president's bidding on interest rates.

And I think most independent observers do think that it's more the latter than a serious investigation of any real wrongdoing.

And Senator Tillis had said, we should say he sits on the powerful Senate Banking Committee, which will have to vote on any Fed nominee.

And he said he will not approve any Fed nominee, including a nominee for chair, until this Justice Department matter is resolved in some transparent way.

And so even though he doesn't have any real qualms with Kevin Warsh as an individual, Tillis is willing to block his ascension to the Fed chairmanship unless this DOJ case is resolved.

Well, Walsh is a sort of traditional Republican.

He worked in the George W. Bush administration.

He has experience at the Federal Reserve.

He was on the Board of Governors during the Bush and part of the Obama administrations.

He had a background on Wall Street.

His reputation the last time he served on the Fed board was as a hawk.