By Karen Brettell
Aug 7 (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh wants the bond market to take the wheel, contending it should do more of the work of setting the price of money in America.
In the seven weeks since his debut policy meeting as chairman, the result has been a volatile, expensive test of a long dormant economic argument: at what point does information from the central bank become too much information for monetary policy to work efficiently? And how will investors react to economic data
and other developments with less guidance from the Fed than they have become accustomed to in recent years?
The latest response to this question will come on Friday morning with the release of the July employment report, a key read on an economy that many investors believe is already running hot.
The price of Warsh's communications-policy shift became unmistakable at his press conference following the Fed's most recent policy meeting last week. A rate hold was expected — futures markets saw only a one-in-three chance of a hike — but what rattled investors was the absence of any clear marker for what would come next.
Longer-dated Treasury yields quickly rose, with the 30-year yield hitting its highest level since 2007 and the 10-year yield touching a level last seen in January 2025.
Oil prices spiked heading into the Fed meeting, thanks to the ebb and flow of the Iran war, renewing questions about Warsh's inflation-fighting resolve. Yields have since declined modestly alongside oil prices, but for many investors the question of how the communications shift will play out in markets is far from settled.
"There is a tension between what Warsh wants versus what the market wants," said Bill Campbell, portfolio manager and head of global sovereign and emerging markets at DoubleLine Capital. Investors now must infer from limited guidance what the Fed chair once spelled out: how the Fed would respond to incoming data.
WHAT "LESS GUIDANCE" MEANS
Forward guidance, the Fed's signaling on likely rate paths, became standard after 2008, when rates hit zero and policymakers used future promises to push down long-term borrowing costs.
Chris Low, chief economist at FHN Financial, said the tool worked as intended then. But the habit grew under Jerome Powell, who rarely moved rates without first telegraphing it. This, Low said, can tie the Fed's hands when quicker action is warranted.
Markets have fixated on the Fed's "dot plot" rate forecasts — projections that often miss the mark as shifting data reshapes the outlook.
Warsh argues the Fed is no better than markets at forecasting the future, so its decisions should look backward, not forward — with the "transitory" inflation call after the pandemic a case in point.
For some investors, the ambiguity is the point. "The strategy behind pulling back on forward guidance is forcing the market to take responsibility and enlisting the market in helping him do his job," said Thomas Urano, co-chief investment officer at Sage Advisory.
Robert Tipp, chief investment strategist and head of global bonds at PGIM Fixed Income, says less certainty from the Fed forces investors to price risk themselves rather than lean on Fed promises.
He points to the prior hiking cycle as a cautionary tale, when Powell routinely talked down the rate outlook even while raising rates, softening the tightening he sought. "You need to make it more expensive and a little more uncertain," Tipp said.
The strategy is a harder sell with inflation elevated, though. Low notes that Warsh made the case for stepping back and letting the market find its own equilibrium when the Fed is close to reaching its goals — back when inflation was under 3% and falling. It's closer to 4% now, which Low sees as the source of much of the criticism aimed at Warsh's approach.
A PREMIUM FOR UNCERTAINTY
Lou Brien, a market strategist at DRW Trading, argues markets aren't refusing the job Warsh has handed them — they're pricing what it costs to do it without a map. "The market wants to be compensated for it," he said, "and the way they get compensated is through higher interest rates."
Part of that premium, Brien argues, reflects lingering questions about Warsh's independence from the White House. Even setting that aside, Brien argues the Fed's influence doesn't vanish just because it stops explaining itself.
Investors still parse statements, dissents and press-conference answers for clues to its reaction function. "The Fed casts a shadow, like it or not," Brien said.
Others point out that other Fed policymakers are still offering their views even as Warsh stays quiet.
"The only one not providing forward guidance at the moment is Warsh," said Gennadiy Goldberg, head of U.S. rates strategy at TD Securities. "This is the era of contingent guidance because it's all contingent on the economic data."
For now, Warsh's approach hasn't resolved a key circularity, said Campbell. Warsh wants rates to be driven more by markets and data rather than the committee, while the market tries to divine his reaction function.
Meanwhile, Warsh has left the door open on this approach. As Low notes, "they're not necessarily committed to never using it again."
(Reporting by Karen Brettell; Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Colin Barr and Andrea Ricci )
