The numbers come first. Inflation has not touched the Federal Reserve's 2% target since February 2021. That single data point is the foundation on which JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is standing as he defends new Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh against a Wall Street chorus that has grown louder by the week.
'I think the world of him,' Dimon told CNBC, adding that Warsh's approach 'makes tremendous sense.' The endorsement carries weight: Dimon leads America's largest bank, and his willingness to break with peers signals that the institutional resistance to Warsh is not unanimous — or, in Dimon's view, even serious.
What Warsh changed. Since taking the chairmanship, Warsh has walked back the Fed's practice of forward guidance — the habit of telegraphing the likely path of interest rates that gave investors a steady hand to trade against. Critics, including several analysts and market strategists, say the shift diminishes transparency and unwinds years of policy progress. Treasury markets moved sharply during Warsh's post-FOMC press conference last week, rattled in part by his suggestion that inflation frameworks might change and his instruction that markets should 'play the ball, not the referee.'
Warsh has also announced five task forces covering Fed communications, data quality, the central bank's balance sheet, productivity drivers including AI, and inflation frameworks. Their findings are expected to be shared early next year. Fifteen leaders have been named across the task forces, meaning the output will likely represent a spectrum of views.
Dimon's endorsement came with a measured caveat. 'I'm not greatly in favor of a task force,' he said, 'but it's the right idea to look at how we measure inflation, what the issues are, the balance sheet.' He added that the Fed will 'over time, do the right thing' — language that acknowledges the turbulence without conceding the critics' core complaint.
On the signaling debate specifically, Dimon was blunt: 'I don't think it makes that much of a difference about signaling to the Fed. I think the people are squealing like stuck pigs on that one.'
Dimon is not alone. Apollo Global Management economist Torsten Sløk published a note titled 'Warsh is right,' arguing the chairman was being 'unfairly criticized.' According to Sløk, eliminating forward guidance 'isn't reckless — it's pragmatic,' and restores real market signals, ends false certainty, and preserves Fed flexibility. That said, Sløk noted the Fed could reduce volatility by providing clearer framework guidance even without explicit rate forecasts.
Jeremy Siegel, emeritus professor of finance at the Wharton School and senior economist at WisdomTree, agreed that central bankers retain 'an obligation to explain the economic framework behind their decisions,' and wrote that the most recent press conference 'fell well short' on that score.
CEO Times read. The market's discomfort with Warsh is real, but Dimon's diagnosis cuts closer to the truth: a Fed that spent years spoon-feeding rate guidance trained investors to trade the referee, not the ball. Warsh is asking the market to do its job again — price risk, weigh data, and accept uncertainty as the cost of a central bank that isn't pre-committing policy it cannot guarantee. That is not a dismantling of progress. It is a restoration of the discipline that free markets require. Capital rewards clear rules; it does not require a central bank that doubles as a market-comfort service.
