“Which Kevin Warsh will show up” at this week’s FOMC press conference, Bloomberg Economics wondered. “The recent advocate of lower rates, or the inflation hawk we saw during and after the Global Financial Crisis?”

It wasn’t a rhetorical question, but it could’ve been.

Warsh remains, for now anyway, a reasonably respectable guy in policy circles, and he needs to establish and retain at least a modicum of credibility with markets in his new role. So I doubt he’ll demonstrate the sort of obsequiousness this week you’d get from a Chair Hassett or a Chair Lutnick.

That said, we’re not going to see an arch inflation hawk on Wednesday when Warsh addresses reporters for the first time as Fed chief. He’ll concede what’s obvious — inflation’s too high — and not likely much else.

Warsh probably has some scripted jokes to lighten the mood, but there’ll be no escaping the tension between Donald Trump’s demands for lower rates (Trump will almost surely mention the Fed on social media this week both before and after Warsh’s debut) and four-handle headline CPI.

As discussed at some length here on Saturday, there’s no data-based case for lower rates currently. That’s a problem for Warsh, as is the demonstrable lack of support on the Committee for an easing bias that’s now totally out of sync with macroeconomic reality.

Recall that there were three hawkish dissents at the last meeting, all calling for the removal of that implicit easing bias from the policy statement. More or less every datapoint received since then argues against additional easing, and “thanks” to the war-driven increase in headline inflation, the real policy rate’s now negative.

The figure above shows you market pricing for the Fed trajectory on the eve of the June policy gathering. In the wake of the May jobs report, traders fully priced one 25bps hike this year. Pricing’s only marginally less aggressive now (~80% chance of a hike).

Given all of that — and considering what the April FOMC minutes suggested about the balance of opinions around the table — I’d be very surprised if the easing bias isn’t removed from the statement this week. That’s the only path to a unanimous decision, which I assume Warsh wants from his first meeting.

Dropping the allusion to cuts from the official forward guidance would also take some of the pressure off Warsh during the press conference. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say not dropping it would set the stage for a presser even more awkward than this one will be already.

The median 2026 marker in the dot plot refresh will likely tip no change to Fed funds this year, a subtlety that’d irritate Trump were he attuned to SEP esoterica (he’s not).

Warsh has designs on reimagining the Fed’s approach to the balance sheet, but as BMO’s Ian Lyngen remarked, it’s far too early for the new chair to get into the rough on that, let alone the deep weeds.

“We suspect that the case for shrinking the balance sheet via SOMA runoff will take months for [Warsh] to convincingly make to the broader Committee,” Lyngen wrote. “Although as a substitute for outright rate hikes (which the White House would surely frown upon), the return of QT would represent a meaningful olive branch to the hawks.”

One final note: Both the headline and core PCE projections will probably move higher in the new SEP, making it even more difficult for Warsh to impart a dovish spin to a hawkish hold.