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‘Wall Street Sweetheart’ Kevin Warsh Picked to Run Fed After Changing Views to Match Trump’s
"Warsh showed his true colors during the 2008 global financial crisis, helping bail out big banks while millions of families lost their jobs and homes," said one critic.
Jan 30, 2026
Kevin Warsh, a former Federal Reserve governor, evidently "passed the loyalty test" put forward by President Donald Trump, said US Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Friday after Warsh was named the president's nominee to lead the central bank.
Trump selected Warsh amid his longtime push for the Federal Reserve to aggressively cut interest rates as the labor market remains weak and inflation is persistently high.
During his time at the Fed from 2006-11, Warsh was seen as a monetary policy hawk, opposing policies aimed at stimulating the economy.
But in recent weeks, as Trump has considered several potential successors to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, whose term is up in May, the president has indicated that Warsh has changed his views on lowering borrowing costs to match those of the White House.
"He thinks you have to lower interest rates," Trump said in December.
Warsh called for “regime change in the conduct of policy" at the central bank last year as the president was considering him as well as longtime economic adviser Kevin Hassett, Fed Gov. Christopher Waller, and BlackRock executive Rick Rieder.
With families across the US struggling to afford the rising cost of groceries, electricity, and other essentials, the progressive advocacy group Groundwork Collaborative emphasized that Trump selected a nominee "with a record of siding with financiers over workers."
Warsh played a key role in coordinating the Fed's response to the 2008 financial crisis, arranging the bailout of the insurance giant American International Group and brokering the sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase.
"Warsh showed his true colors during the 2008 global financial crisis, helping bail out big banks while millions of families lost their jobs and homes," said Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at Groundwork. “Kevin Warsh is a disastrous choice to oversee monetary policy.”
Now that Warsh appears to have changed his views on interest rates to match Trump's, his nomination "is the latest step in Trump’s plan to ensure the Fed does what he tells it to, not what’s best for American families," said Jacquez, a former Obama administration official.
"Trump chose Kevin Warsh for Fed chair because his father-in-law is a billionaire donor, the brains behind Trump’s idiotic scheme to invade Greenland. He also chose him because Warsh has shown willingness to wildly alter his views on monetary policy based on who is in the White House."
The nomination was announced weeks after Powell issued a stinging rebuke to Trump's Department of Justice following the news that the DOJ was threatening him with criminal charges over his testimony regarding renovations at the Federal Reserve building—charges that Powell said were a pretext for punishing him over his refusal to bend to Trump's demand for lowered interest rates.
Trump has also tried to fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Fed's board of governors. The Supreme Court heard arguments this month in the case regarding the attempted dismissal, and appeared skeptical that it could legally move forward.
This week, the Fed opted to hold interest rates at 3.5-3.75%, above the 1% level Trump has called for.
Warsh is currently a senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University and works with billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller.
After the DOJ launched its criminal probe into Powell this month, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said he would not support any nominee to succeed the chairman until the DOJ's investigation was resolved.
Warren (D-Mass.) said Friday that "no Republican purporting to care about Fed independence should agree to move forward with this nomination until Trump drops his witch hunts" that have targeted Powell and Cook.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) also pointed out that the selection of Warsh could be Trump's latest move in his push for US control of Greenland. Warsh is married to Jane Lauder, a daughter of longtime Trump friend and Estée Lauder Companies heir Ronald Lauder, who first proposed that the vast, strategically located Arctic island should belong to the US instead of the kingdom of Denmark.
"Trump chose Kevin Warsh for Fed chair because his father-in-law is a billionaire donor, the brains behind Trump’s idiotic scheme to invade Greenland," Beyer said. "He also chose him because Warsh has shown willingness to wildly alter his views on monetary policy based on who is in the White House."
"The Senate should note these bad qualifications and remember Warsh’s awful track record at the Fed during the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession," the congressman added. "These concerns along with Trump’s attacks on the Fed mean this nominee must face hard questions about independence and monetary policy. Warsh can’t just get a rubber stamp."
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Weak US Jobs Report Shows 'Bleak Economic Reality' for Workers Under Trump
There has been "almost no hiring since April," observed one economist.
Jan 09, 2026
The US labor market appears to be running on fumes under President Donald Trump, as the latest jobs report revealed that the American economy added just 50,000 jobs in December, below economists' consensus estimate of 55,000 jobs.
The report, released on Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), also found that the US economy as a whole created just 584,000 jobs in 2025, which is less than a third of the 2 million jobs created in 2024 during the last year of former President Joe Biden's term.
The 2025 figure also marked the lowest number of annual jobs created since 2020, when the economy was shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Fox Business anchor Cheryl Casone couldn't put a happy spin on the jobs report after its release, as she noted that the gains of just 37,000 private-sector jobs on the month were "much weaker than expected."
"Private sector payrolls coming in much weaker than expected" -- Maria Bartiromo and company cope with an underwhelming December jobs report (wait for Stephen Moore's bonkers commentary at the end) pic.twitter.com/C5D8qu5h8f
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 9, 2026
Digging further into the report, Bloomberg economic analyst Joe Weisenthal observed on X that manufacturing employment has been hit particularly hard in recent months, despite Trump's vow that his tariffs would lead to a manufacturing revival in the US.
"It's not just that total manufacturing employment is shrinking," he explained. "The number of manufacturing sub-sectors that are adding jobs is rapidly shrinking. Of the 72 different types of manufacturing tracked by the BLS, just 38.2% are still adding jobs. A year ago it was 47.2%."
Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, noted that the weakness in the labor market extends beyond the manufacturing sector, as there has been "almost no hiring outside of healthcare and hospitality" since the start of Trump's second term.
Richardson also observed that "there was almost no hiring since April" of last year, when Trump announced his "Liberation Day" tariffs that sent shockwaves through the global economy.
Economist Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, zeroed in on downward revisions in prior jobs reports, reinforcing that the current labor market is anemic.
"With the revisions, the average for the last three months was a fall of 22,000 [jobs]," Baker explained. "The healthcare and social assistance sector added an average of 49,000 jobs over this period, which means that outside of healthcare the economy lost an average of 71,000 jobs in the last three months."
Alex Jacquez, chief economist at Groundwork Collaborative, said the jobs report reflected a "lifeless economy," and he pinned the blame on Trump and his trade policies as a top reason.
"Working families face sluggish wage growth, fewer job opportunities, and never-ending price hikes on groceries, household essentials, and utilities," said Jacquez. "Despite the president's endless attempts to deflect and distract from the bleak economic reality, workers and job seekers know their budgets feel tighter than ever thanks to Trump’s disastrous economic mismanagement."
Economist Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute took a look at the jobs numbers and concluded the US labor market now is far weaker than the one Biden left Trump nearly one year ago.
"The slowdown in job growth this year is stark compared to 2024," Gould wrote on Bluesky. "The average monthly gain was only 49,000 in 2025 compared to 168,000 in 2024. Over the last three months, average job growth was actually negative, meaning there are fewer jobs now than in September."
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the Navy Federal Credit Union's chief economist. That error has been corrected.
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Watchdog Celebrates Victory Over Instacart Pricing Scheme—But Says Broader Corporate Abuse Remains
"Instacart is far from the only corporation using AI technologies to determine exactly how much profit they can extract from their customers by overcharging them," said the executive director of Groundwork Action.
Dec 22, 2025
The watchdog group that exposed Instacart's artificial intelligence pricing scheme is rejoicing after the company announced on Monday that it was ending the controversial program.
Earlier this month, Consumer Reports joined the Groundwork Collaborative and More Perfect Union to report that the grocery shopping app—which calls itself the "largest online grocery marketplace in North America"—was using the AI pricing software Eversight to charge up to 23% more for some customers than others for the same items, subjecting users to a "pricing experiment" that could cost them as much as $1,200 extra each year.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took notice of the report, saying it was "disturbed" by the findings, and launched an investigation on Thursday, which caused the company's stock price to plummet by about 7%. It also attracted attention from members of Congress, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who demanded government action on what he called "shakedown pricing."
Instacart agreed that same day to pay the FTC $60 million in a settlement for what the commission said was "a variety of deceptive tactics that misled consumers and caused them to pay more in fees." These included falsely advertising "free delivery" to consumers on their first order, implying that customers would receive a full refund if they were dissatisfied with their delivery, and failing to disclose membership charges.
The settlement does not mention Instacart's use of AI pricing experiments, but on Monday, the company said it would hit the brakes on that as well, following customer backlash.
"Effective immediately, Instacart is ending all item price tests on our platform. Retailers will no longer be able to use Eversight technology to run item price tests on Instacart," the company said in a statement. "Now, if two families are shopping for the same items, at the same time, from the same store location on Instacart, they see the same prices—period."
While it acknowledged that the pricing scheme "missed the mark for some customers," the company maintains that it was not using "dynamic pricing or surveillance pricing" and that it was not changing prices "based on supply or demand, personal data, demographics, or individual shopping behavior."
Alex Jacquez, Groundwork's chief of policy and advocacy, celebrated on social media that "Instacart has ended all item pricing experiments on its platform," calling it a "big win for consumers."
Groundwork Action's executive director, Lindsay Owens, likewise took pride in the fact that "once we pulled back the curtain on Instacart’s hidden pricing experiments, the company had no choice but to close the lab," but also said "it shouldn’t take investigative research, public outcry, and the threat of FTC action to convince companies not to treat consumers like lab rats."
"Instacart is far from the only corporation using AI technologies to determine exactly how much profit they can extract from their customers by overcharging them," she added.
Though the investigation did not find evidence that Instacart was using these methods, other companies—including Amazon, Delta Air Lines, and Home Depot—have been accused of fluctuating prices for consumers based on ZIP code or income level.
Owens said, "It’s time for regulators to put a stop to corporate pricing schemes and take action to restore fair, predictable, and transparent pricing.”
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