Scott Bessent Reportedly Narrows Down Fed Chair Candidates List To Five

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has reportedly narrowed down the list of candidates for the Federal Reserve Chair position to five from 11, following a series of interviews.

According to a CNBC report citing unnamed senior Treasury officials, the list of candidates includes Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman and Fed Governor Christopher Waller, National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett, former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh, and BlackRock Fixed Income CIO Rick Rieder.

The report added that Bessent, two senior Treasury officials, and two senior White House officials will lead another round of interviews with these five candidates over the coming weeks and months.

While Bessent is expected to narrow the list further before sending it to President Donald Trump for the final decision, the report stated that the candidate could first be nominated as a Fed Governor and subsequently as the Fed Chair. The reason for this is that outgoing Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s governor seat currently has only two years out of 14 left in its term.

However, the term of former Fed Governor Adriana Kugler’s governor seat will end in January. The Trump administration has currently filled that seat with Stephen Miran in the interim. Nominating the Fed Chair pick as a governor from this seat would give the candidate the full 14 years, the report added. 

Waller, Hassett, and Warsh have already been named as the finalists by President Trump, the report said. This means Bowman and Rieder are the two new names on the list.

Meanwhile, U.S. equities rose in Friday’s pre-market trade. At the time of writing, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), which tracks the S&P 500 index, was up 0.17%, the Invesco QQQ Trust ETF (QQQ) gained 0.18%, while the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF Trust (DIA) rose 0.18%. Retail sentiment around the S&P 500 ETF on Stocktwits was in the ‘bearish’ territory.

The iShares 7-10 Year Treasury Bond ETF (IEF) was up 0.31% at the time of writing.

Also See: Silver Prices Hit $50 For First Time In Over 4 Decades

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