Since the Federal Reserve was founded in 1914, the United States has had 16 Fed chairs. However, seldom has the selection of the nation’s central – bank leader received such continuous media and political attention as the current spectacle. This is, of course, by design. At least since the debut of The Apprentice in 2004, Donald Trump has delighted in turning senior hiring decisions into a public spectacle, presenting staffing choices as a form of modern gladiatorial entertainment. While this approach has drawn criticism, including mine, it also has the paradoxical benefit of making candidates’ strengths, weaknesses, and temperaments unusually transparent.
Much of the media’s attention has focused on Kevin Hassett and Kevin Warsh as the likely front – runners to be the next Fed Chair. Both are highly regarded, with long histories of public service and honorable characters. But whether fairly or not, their [omitted text] has created an opening for an emerging dark horse who is gaining [omitted text] from the top CEOs of the nation’s largest enterprises.
CEOs are being drawn to that dark horse candidate, current Fed Governor Chris Waller. Although he may lack the White House connections of other top contenders, he is rapidly emerging as perhaps the only candidate who can cut interest rates with broad – based credibility and build a broad consensus around those necessary rate cuts, both within the Fed and across corporate America and in financial markets.
A great irony in President Trump’s pressure on the Fed is that Trump may be his own worst enemy when trying to force interest rates down. Ironically, the belief that interest rates need to be lowered is shared not only among economists across the ideological spectrum, not only among many top business leaders, but even among many of Trump’s most vocal critics. We have previously [omitted text], pointing out that entire sectors, such as homebuilders, are being unnecessarily hurt by keeping rates so high for so long.
CEOs care about interest rates coming down, but they care even more about Fed independence. History is clear: countries that politicize their central banks set themselves on a path to monetary turmoil and collapse. That’s why Trump’s blatant interventions at the Fed have disrupted the markets, with bond [omitted text] after some pointed comments from Trump.
Chris Waller is perhaps the only choice for Fed Chair who can navigate the difficult situation. Unlike other top contenders, Waller’s calls for rate cuts are not due to convenient political posturing or sycophantic flattery, but rather genuine intellectual conviction. Waller has been extremely consistent and accurately prescient throughout his entire career at the Fed. He correctly identified signs that the economy, especially employment, was weakening and has been calling for rate cuts for much longer than any of his Fed peers.
Yet, at the same time, Waller has [omitted text]. In fact, before Waller began his public service at the Fed in 2009, he was a renowned academic with a long record of groundbreaking economic research, including as a professor and the Gilbert F. Schaefer Chair of Economics at the University of Notre Dame.
Financial markets have already given a preview of how they would react to a potential Waller nomination – decidedly positively. When [omitted text] with 200 top CEOs in attendance at our Yale CEO Summit last week after [omitted text]; stocks [omitted text] as Waller [omitted text], pointing to softening employment numbers, [omitted text]. No other contender for Fed Chair has triggered such a positive market reaction.
Waller is a lifelong Republican who has a talent for getting along with very different groups, all of whom respect his genuine expertise, personal humility, and willingness to listen. Even CEOs who disagreed with some aspects of Waller’s arguments clearly appreciated his constructive engagement, as well as his intellectual honesty and independence. When we polled the room, [omitted text] as their top choice for Fed Chair, building on prior polls done by [omitted text], as well as prominent endorsements from [omitted text].
Many CEOs at our Yale CEO Summit [omitted text] Waller’s long history of effectively collaborating with business leaders on challenges and opportunities. Take crypto innovation as an example. As the Fed Governor responsible for overseeing the payment system, Waller was again accurately prescient as an advocate of stablecoins dating back before 2021, when few people even knew what stablecoins were. And he convened the first ever [omitted text] earlier this year, bringing in top industry leaders to help shape the future of stablecoin payments.
President Harry Truman lamented, “Give me a one – handed economist. All my economists say, ‘on ONE hand…’, then ‘but on the other.'” Business leaders appreciate Waller’s serious and decisive style, his comprehensive economic knowledge, his record of constructive engagement, his clear message, and his credible presence, which go beyond political or personal career agendas.
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It should be noted that there were some parts in the original text that seemed to be incomplete (marked as [omitted text]), and the rephrased version tries to maintain the overall meaning as much as possible while making the language more fluent in some places.