April 30, 2026 | Lawrence Lepard: New Fed Chair, New Round of Easing

The Fed is about to get a new Chairman (economist Kevin Warsh), and the markets are naturally wondering if this means big changes in monetary policy.

My take is that it obviously means lower interest rates and generally easier money, since that’s what an incoming Fed chair would have to promise President Trump in order to get the job.

For a more sophisticated perspective, here’s a post by Lawrence Lepard, money manager and author of The Big Print: What Happened To America And How Sound Money Will Fix It (note the 5-star rating on Amazon):

Big Print Update

In written answers to the Senate Warsh re-emphasized that he does not think inflation statistics are accurate and in his testimony he suggested using the “trimmed mean” which throws out outlier prices and is currently printing much lower than headline numbers. Wake up folks. Bessent is calling the shots and Warsh is going to cut short rates. They have to to reduce government interest expenses. Given that this administration doesn’t move slowly, I could see an unscheduled Fed meeting right after May 15 and a 100 bps rate cut. Last chance to get on the sound money train at relatively attractive prices: gold, silver, bitcoin.

Is this the Big Print? Yes and no. M2 the monetary base grows when the banks make loans and print money into existence. The Fed creates money out of thin air in the form of reserves which it gives to the banks in exchange for Treasury Bonds. Literally with a mouse click. The bank reserves do not hit M2 but they allow the banks to increase their lending which does hit M2. It generally does this in a crisis (2008, COVID).

Warsh has said that (absent a market disruption) he wants to shrink the balance sheet (i don’t believe he can) but that lower interest rates fuel growth. He believes in AI productivity gains he and Bessent emphasize growth. Therefore, he will cut. Another credit/inflation cycle will begin. All other things being equal: inflationary. The big unknown? The Bond Market. If the bond market realizes that real yields are hugely negative it will sell off hard and drive the Fed into crisis mode and YCC.

Given that the middle east problem appears to be dragging on my operating assumption is lower rates, credit growth, more inflation, stock and bond trouble and then the CRISIS which creates the Big Print on the Fed’s balance sheet. If they were to lock long bonds at 2.5% which they did to finance WWII the bond market will look at the Fed and say “sold to you”. The Fed Balance sheet is ~$6.6T. US Federal debt is $39T. So, Big Print 1: GFC $3.6T, Big Print 2: COVID $5.0T. Big Print 3: ???

None of us own enough sound money assets.

John Rubino April 30th, 2026

Posted In: John Rubino Substack

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