The Latest on the Long Lost Fed
The Dividend Cafe
The Dividend Cafe - The Bahnsen Group
4.9 • 569 Ratings
🗓️ 24 April 2026
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today's Post - https://bahnsen.co/4w7lcrl
The episode focuses on the Federal Reserve as Jerome Powell’s chair term approaches its May 15, 2026 end and President Trump’s nominee, Kevin Warsh, nears confirmation. The main hurdle had been a DOJ criminal investigation into alleged cost overruns at the Fed building renovation, which Senator Thom Tillis and other Republicans cited as grounds to pause Walsh’s nomination; the attorney general later dropped the criminal probe and referred the matter to the Fed inspector general, clearing the way for Senate Banking Committee action and a full Senate vote. Prediction markets and fed funds futures quickly repriced, with the probability of no rate cuts this year falling to about 62% and a meaningful chance of one cut remaining. David expects Warsh to argue oil is a supply shock outside monetary inflation, prioritize labor-market risks, and pair any rate cuts with tighter balance-sheet policy and reduced QE to improve price discovery and long-run market credibility.
00:00 Fed Returns to Spotlight
01:58 Powell Replacement Timeline
03:20 DOJ Probe and Senate Standoff
04:37 Investigation Dropped Breakthrough
06:52 Markets Reprice Rate Cuts
08:06 Forward Guidance and New Chair Uncertainty
10:43 Warsh Case for Cutting Rates
12:24 Balance Sheet Over Fed Funds
14:02 QE Exit and Fiscal Discipline
16:18 Market Credibility and Reform Hopes
18:18 Wrap Up and Next Week Preview
Links mentioned in this episode: DividendCafe.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Dividend Cafe, weekly market commentary focused on dividends in your portfolio |
| 0:06.5 | and dividends in your understanding of economic life. |
| 0:11.9 | Well, hello and welcome to the Dividend Cafe, where this week we are going to dive into one of my |
| 0:18.2 | favorite topics in the world, the Fed, a topic that I have been |
| 0:22.3 | deprived of being able to talk about lately because of all the necessary conversation around |
| 0:29.7 | the Iran War and as well as AI and other topics that have just sort of pushed the Fed off of |
| 0:37.0 | the front page and even off of the |
| 0:38.6 | second page for a bit, but came back with a vengeance this week because of the fact that we are |
| 0:44.6 | finally after talking about it so much in months and years past at the point in which the |
| 0:51.4 | placement of Chairman Jerome Powell is imminent. |
| 0:57.3 | And today, Friday, the actual day in which I was sitting and writing Dividend Cafe, |
| 1:03.2 | when the news broke, we finally got the kind of breakthrough story that appears to set us |
| 1:09.6 | on the right track to have the new chairman get confirmed. |
| 1:14.5 | I'll explain the drama that was holding that back in a moment. |
| 1:18.2 | But I want to talk about the Fed today, not just around the soap opera that is played out |
| 1:22.5 | between the Federal Reserve and the White House, but what it means to policy and what I'm expecting for |
| 1:29.2 | interest rates in the very short term, which is, I suppose, what a lot of you may be interested |
| 1:34.0 | in, what a lot of borrowers are interested in, and what a lot of market participants are |
| 1:39.5 | thinking about. But I also want to talk about where my larger aspiration lies in the confirmation and soon |
| 1:48.8 | to be active term of Kevin Warsh to be the new Federal Reserve chair. So let me start with the |
| 1:57.2 | drama and then we'll get into the policy side of it and pull some conclusions that I think |
| 2:02.8 | are useful for all market participants, particularly those of you that are as interested in |
... |
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