Fed Chairman Warsh names Marc Andreessen, former Walmart CEO, and top economists to lead five task forces rethinking central bank operations
Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh announced the leaders of five task forces on Thursday, tapping venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, former Walmart CEO Doug McMillion, and a roster of prominent economists to re-examine how the central bank operates.
The five task forces
Kevin M. Warsh, the new chairman of the Federal Reserve, on Thursday named more than a dozen external advisers to lead five task forces that will scrutinize core aspects of the central bank's policymaking. The groups will examine Fed communications, its $6.7 trillion balance sheet, the data sources it prioritizes, the impact of artificial intelligence on productivity and jobs, and the models used to understand inflation.
Each task force will carefully consider whether policymakers' means and methods, analytical tools and policy approaches can be improved upon.
Who is leading them
The communications task force is led by Peter Fisher, former president of the Dallas Fed, Mervyn King, former governor of the Bank of England, and Arminio Fraga, former head of Brazil's central bank. The balance sheet group includes Harvard economist Karen Dynan, former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, and former Fed governor Jeremy Stein.
Raj Chetty of Harvard, former Walmart CEO Doug McMillion, and University of Chicago economist Kevin Murphy will review the data the Fed monitors. The productivity and AI task force is led by Marc Andreessen, Stanford's Charles Jones (currently at Anthropic), and Xbox CEO Asha Sharma. Greg Mankiw, Nobel laureate Thomas Sargent, and former BIS official William White will assess inflation models.
I am honored that the best minds from a range of disciplines have agreed to work with us to sharpen our performance as an institution.
What Warsh said
The chairman framed the initiative as a response to a rapidly changing economy. "The U.S. economy has changed significantly over the last generation, and never more so than right now," he said. The task forces are to operate independently with Fed staff support and report their findings to the Federal Open Market Committee by year-end.
What comes next
The groups are expected to deliver recommendations by the end of 2026. Their work marks the most direct attempt yet by the new chairman to reshape the central bank, potentially paving the way for sweeping changes in how the Fed conducts monetary policy.
