Bloomberg Surveillance TV: June 18th, 2026

**SPEAKER_2** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

**Jonathan Ferro** (0:11)
This is the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast. I'm Jonathan Ferro, along with Lisa Abramowitz and Annmarie Hordern. Join us each day for insight from the best in markets, economics and geopolitics. From our global headquarters in New York City, we are live on Bloomberg Television weekday mornings from 6 to 9 a.m. Eastern.
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**Lisa Abramowitz** (0:36)
We begin this hour with stocks rising and bond yields falling after Kevin Warsh made it clear the central bank will not tolerate high inflation. Ed Yardeni of Yardeni Research calling Warsh a, quote, hawk in dove's clothing, writing, we thought he was a dove who favored lowering the federal funds rate. Instead, he hammered home a strict Orthodox message on inflation with a strong commitment to price stability. Ed joins us now for more. Ed, great to see you. Thank you for being here. So is this more of an Alan Greenspan rather than say an Alan Burns?

**Ed Yardeni** (1:07)
I really can't answer that because I have a task force working on that.

**Lisa Abramowitz** (1:11)
Don't we all?

**Ed Yardeni** (1:11)
It's very Greenspan. I mean, it's not a lot of information, a lot of ambiguity, and occasionally some surprises. He started right off the bat with a surprise. It's kind of like he had an interview with President Trump and told him everything that he wanted. Yes, we're going to lower interest rates. Yes, AI is creating productivity. Then as soon as he got the job, it's like the old Warsh concerned about price stability. He mentioned price stability over and over again. Not only that, but he pretty much committed to 2%.
He didn't finagle that too much at all.

**Lisa Abramowitz** (1:47)
Mike Reed of RBC said, by their count, inflation was mentioned by Kevin Warsh 19 times compared to 4 times where he mentioned the labor market.

**Ed Yardeni** (1:57)
Right.

**Lisa Abramowitz** (1:58)
Is this-

**Ed Yardeni** (1:58)
And the labor market is looking good.

**Lisa Abramowitz** (2:00)
Right, exactly. There is no mention of dual mandate or a sense that maybe there's some weakness there in conflict in the dual mandate. Is this all talk and not action?
If you were skeptical, you would say this is somebody who wants to job on the market. You're seeing the move that he wanted in the flattening of the yield curve. And then he won't necessarily-

**Ed Yardeni** (2:18)
Well, I think he's hoping that he'll be lucky because so far so good. I mean, the price of oil is coming down. As you mentioned, the price of gasoline is coming down. We are going to see the headline inflation use coming down substantially. And if he's lucky and the recent inflation surge doesn't spread into the rest of the inflation numbers, then he may very well just kind of sit back and let that all happen. And then he'll say, well, look, things are going in the right direction. We don't have to do anything.
And at the same time, signal that down the road, maybe the productivity story will come back as a reason to lower rates. But right now, it may be a do nothing fudge for a while.

**Annmarie Hordern** (2:58)
What if we see a labor market that does weaken, though? What's his reactionary function going to be?

**Ed Yardeni** (3:03)
Well, he kind of locked himself in. I mean, he didn't say very much except on price stability.
He said that over and over again. And I think that if you get a weaker labor market, he's going to be called on if he suddenly becomes very liberal, you know, in the mandate and says, well, people are getting hurt. We've got to focus on the unemployment rate. He basically said that in order to have a healthy economy, in order to have a healthy labor market, you have to have a price stability, which, by the way, is deja vu all over again, because that's what Powell had been saying for quite some time.

**Annmarie Hordern** (3:42)
Do you think he was the one that threw out the proposal of discussing a rate cut at the meeting just so he can, you know, when he has breakfast with the Treasury Secretary, say, look, I threw it out there and I was pushed back?

**Ed Yardeni** (3:54)
We don't know. I mean, you know, it's a good conspiracy theory.

**Lisa Abramowitz** (4:00)
Right, could work.

**Ed Yardeni** (4:01)
It kind of makes sense, you know, you go back to the president and said, hey, I was the one who, you know, well, but he said he didn't vote on the dot blot. So, you know, I don't know where he is on all that.