Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh told the Jackson Hole symposium on Friday that recent inflation readings do not show "underlying trends have meaningfully improved," CNBC reported. He did not commit to raising rates in September.
That still moved markets. CNBC said CME Group's FedWatch tool put the odds of a September hike at 55.7 percent after the speech, up about 20 points from a day earlier. Quartz described the odds as about 50 percent. The figures do not match, and this account did not independently pull FedWatch.
Warsh, quoted by CNBC, said the Fed "should not indulge a regime in which market participants are looking primarily to the Fed for their next trade." HousingWire quoted him saying, "We must be confident that underlying inflation is moving to our objective, clearly and at sufficient speed. Otherwise, we have work to do." Those lines come from the named news reports. The official Fed transcript retrieved for this story was cut off before the inflation and market passages.
Outlets also disagreed on the two-year Treasury yield after the speech, printing 4.31 percent (CNBC), 4.28 percent (Quartz and the New York Times), and 4.325 percent (The National). They likewise split on whether stocks climbed or dipped first.
Warsh took office as Fed chair on May 22, 2026.