Bloomberg Talks
Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran Talks Kevin Warsh, Fed Rates, Jerome Powell
30 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts, radio, news. what is sort of technically your last 24 hours as a Fed governor. Your term is up tomorrow, but you're staying on.
Thanks for having me back. It's good to see you again. Look, as you say, my term expires over the weekend. But per the Federal Reserve Act, I'll be staying in my seat until someone is confirmed to replace me, presumably Chairman-designate Kevin Warsh.
Chapter 2: What is Stephen Miran's current role at the Federal Reserve?
This is common practice and has happened many times by other governors who have waited for someone else to be confirmed into their seat.
Now, the question is, how long is that going to take? Have you had any indication from the White House or from anybody on Capitol Hill? We know that Senator Tillis is threatening to block the nomination, but that could easily be handled. That could go away any time. Do you have any idea how long you're going to be still at the Fed?
I have no idea. I mean, I wish I knew. You know, my confirmation process took, what, six weeks or so? A little bit more than that. So, you know, I have no idea how long it will take for Chairman and Designate Warsh, but, you know, I'm confident that the process will work and the Senate will come together.
All right, so you get to March 18th. That's the next FOMC meeting.
Chapter 3: How is Kevin Warsh positioned to lead the Federal Reserve?
You're still going to dissent for lower rates? And I ask because this time you only dissented for 25 basis points instead of 50.
Yeah, so I descended for 25 instead of 50 for a couple reasons. One of them is that we did cut since I joined the FOMC in September. We cut three times. We reduced the federal funds rate by 75 basis points. That means we're less far from neutral than we were when I arrived in September. I still think rates are too restrictive, as I've made very clear.
I still think we need to cut interest rates substantially further from here. However, given that we've moved, we've made some progress reducing rates, we can now sort of, I think, in my view, proceed at a slower pace of about a quarter point per meeting. It's no longer as imperative to move in 50 clips as it was.
The other thing that happened is the labor market data did come in a little bit better. And they didn't come in to an extent that they alleviated all my concerns about the labor market. You know, far from it. Indeed, the labor market has been on this gradual cooling trend for over two years now.
And it should take much more than just one data print to make you change your mind about the trend in the labor market. But nevertheless, we did get a little bit of better data. And that helped alleviate some concerns for you, but not all of them. You know, I still have some concerns there.
Well, we got a 4.4% unemployment rate last month, and next Friday we're expecting to get the same thing. So that's two months at least of evidence that the labor market is somewhat stabilized, which is what the Fed was saying in its statement this last time.
And yet, Jay Powell said, given the numbers that you've got to work with, it looks like PCE inflation on the core is going to go to 3% or more. The optics don't look good for cutting rates when inflation is going up and the labor market is stabilized.
So I disagree with a couple things you said. First of all, the unemployment rate, even though it's the single most important indicator, is far from the total of information that we know about the labor market. There's plenty of evidence in the labor market data that indicates that we can accommodate additional demand for labor.
There have been signs like it taking longer for some folks to find jobs, pockets of weakness among younger folks and folks without college degrees. That all indicates that there increased part-time work for economic reasons. All this indicates that there's additional slack in the labor market beyond what's indicated in the unemployment rate alone.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of the upcoming FOMC meeting?
We don't have an inflation excess of any inflation that's relevant for supply, demand, and balances of the type of monetary policy we respond to. We should not be making monetary policy. We should not be asking people to give up their jobs because of quirks of how inflation is measured.
Chapter 5: How does Stephen Miran view current interest rates and their impact?
That just to me is not a good idea for policy. It's a bit it's a grotesque interpretation of stable prices.
I am curious, Steve, just about how we start to measure things going forward. And I just want to go back to the labor market for a second, because there's been a lot of discussion about the stability or maybe the potential instability there.
I spoke this morning with the CEO of American Express, and he actually talked a lot about small businesses, the kind of middle market businesses, if you will, that at least in his view, weren't as healthy as some of the larger businesses. And I'm curious if there's been any meaningful discussion at the Fed about that kind of middle market of our economy.
You know, excuse me, there is conversations about that. You know, people talk a lot about sort of K-shaped economies and things like that. And I think usually they're talking about households when they talk about that, but there certainly is an element of that on the firm side as well. You know, from my perspective, some of that stuff is helpful for understanding where the economy is going, but
I don't believe in targeting a specific sector of the economy. I believe that the statutes that Congress gave us instruct us to target the overall macroeconomy as a whole. And I'm focused on aggregate employment. I'm focused on aggregate inflation. And so I do see there definitely are pockets of weakness here and there, but I'm focused on the overall levels.
But there was some discussion a few years back with Jay Powell when he did start to look at certain segments, the idea that when you look at the economy in aggregate, sometimes it obscures certain things, whether it's to the upside or the downside. Is there not any value in maybe trying to, I guess, bisect or dissect things into different sections?
Oh, no, there absolutely is, because it can help you predict where the overall is going to go, right? And I did that a moment ago with the labor market.
As I was saying, if you look at younger folks, if you look at folks that have college degrees, if you look at folks that are marginally attached to the labor market, I think that very often they're leading indicators of where the overall labor market is going to go. And they portray additional slack beyond what just the unemployment rate itself would give you.
And I think to the extent you're seeing weakness in some small business segments like the Amex CEO that you mentioned before, that is the type of thing that I would be interested in knowing more about in terms of what it portends for the overall economy.
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Chapter 6: What concerns does Miran have about the labor market?
You know them as well as I do, right? That's not a secret. He's never asked me to do anything. And I wasn't in the room with any of Chairman-designate Warsh's conversations with the president or anybody else involved in this election process. So I don't know what those conversations were like.
But if they were anything like the conversations I had with the president about monetary policy, then he wouldn't have asked him to take any specific actions.
Well, how do you get the public to realize that?
You do that by taking policy actions that are consistent with the data.
And I think that, you know, I've laid out a case where the inflation measures that are consistent with supply, demand and balances in the economy, the inflation measures that are relevant for monetary policy are indicating that there's no material overheating, that there's no material inflation issues in this country right now.
So by taking policy steps that are consistent with the economic data, that are justified by the state of the economy, I think you're delivering the right policy. At the end of the day, the financial markets and the economy respond to whether the policy is the appropriate policy or not. They don't respond to why the policy is there. Right.
The interest rate doesn't really care why, you know, the long end of the yield curve ultimately doesn't really care why the short rate is where the short rate is. It cares whether the short rate is appropriately set and what the consequences of the short rate are for the economy. The motives of the people who went into sort of setting the short rate, those aren't really important.
Is it the right policy for the economy or not is what matters. And I think that that's what I've that's what I've labored to labor to work for is to sort of is to do a lot of a lot of analysis of the inflation scenario a lot of analysis of the labor market a lot of analysis of the economy and put that all out there. And I put all of my analysis out there all the time.
I try and be as transparent as I possibly can with my calculations. Everybody knows exactly why I hold the views I hold.
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