Who will run the Federal Reserve next?
It is expected that the candidate will first be appointed governor of the Federal Reserve before later being appointed chairman. Although Powell’s term ends in May, his governorship seat will run for two more years.
CNBC previously reported on Oct. 10 that the five candidates are Michelle “Miki” Bowman, the Fed’s vice chair for oversight; Fed Governor Christopher Waller; Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council; former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh; And BlackRock director Rick Rieder.
Michelle Bowman
Bowman is a lawyer who has served on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors since 2018, when Trump appointed her during his first term. She has a background in community banking and is the first person to hold the community bank board seat, which was created by a 2015 law.
Previously, Bowman served as Kansas banking commissioner from January 2017 to November 2018 and held senior positions at the Federal Agency for Emergency Management and the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush.
In March 2025, after seven years on the Federal Reserve board, Trump nominated Bowman to succeed Michael Barr as the Fed’s vice chairman for supervision.
Christopher Waller
Waller, also a Trump nominee, has been a Fed board member since 2020. He is expected to continue in this position until 2030.
Previously, Waller served as research director and executive vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. He is publicly in favor of further interest rate cuts.
Recently speaking at an economic conference in London, Waller referred to labor market data and said, “This reading of the data leads me at this time to support a cut in the FOMC policy rate at our next meeting on December 9 and 10, as a matter of risk management.”
Kevin Hassett
Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, was appointed to the position this year. Previously, he was a senior advisor and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors from 2017 to 2019, then returned in 2020 to advise the Trump administration on its economic response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hassett also worked at the American Business Institute and advised Republican presidential campaigns, including those of John McCain, George W. Bush and Mitt Romney.
Hassett recently defended Trump’s 50-year mortgage proposal, telling reporters on Nov. 10 that “it’s something we take very seriously as a policy challenge. And extending the term of mortgages could reduce monthly payments by hundreds of dollars.”
Despite his lack of tenure at the Fed, The Economic Times has called Hassett the “leading candidate” for the role, citing his eight years working for Trump and a brief stint at Jared Kushner’s (Trump’s son-in-law) private equity firm.
Kevin Warsch
Warsh served as governor of the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2011. During that time, he served as the Fed’s chief liaison to Wall Street and represented the central bank at the G20 summit.
Warsh also served as special assistant for economic policy and executive secretary of the National Economic Council under George W. Bush.
Warsh is currently a visiting researcher at Stanford University Hoover Institutiona lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a member of the Group of thirty and the Congressional Budget Office‘S Panel of economic advisors.
In June 2025, he was reported as a leading candidate to succeed Powell. In November, Walsh wrote one op-ed in The Wall Street Journal entitled “The Federal Reserve’s Broken Leadership,” in which he called inflation “a choice” and called for monetary and regulatory policy reform.
“The Fed’s track record under Chairman Jerome Powell is one of unwise choices. The Fed should reexamine the big mistakes that led to the big inflation,” Warsh wrote. “The Fed’s bloated balance sheet, designed to support the largest companies in a bygone crisis era, can be significantly reduced.”
Rik Rieder
Rick Rieder does BlackRock‘S chief investment officer of the global fixed income sector. He leads the firm’s fundamental fixed income business and global allocation investment team, overseeing approximately $2.4 trillion in assets. He is a member of BlackRock’s Global Executive Committee and Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Council.
Rieder, like Hassett, has never held a board position at the Fed. He is also a member of the investment advisory committees of Alphabet/Google And UBS research. He previously served as vice chairman of the US Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee and as a member of the Federal Reserve’s Investment Advisory Committee on Financial Markets.
In one September interview Speaking to Bloomberg Television, Rieder said the housing market is “stuck” and called for lowering costs.
