The Trump administration is narrowing its field of potential replacements for Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. This weekend, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent named the five finalists Trump could pick. They are:
- Christopher Waller – Federal Reserve Board Governor
- Kevin Hassett – National Economic Council White House Director
- Kevin Warsh – Former Federal Reserve Board Governor
- Michelle Bowman – Federal Reserve Board Governor
- Rick Rieder – BlackRock Global CIO of Fixed Income
The five finalists’ official bios read:
Christopher Waller (from the Federal Reserve):
Christopher J. Waller took office as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on December 18, 2020, to fill an unexpired term ending January 31, 2030.
Prior to his appointment at the Board, Dr. Waller served as executive vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis since 2009.
In addition to his experience in the Federal Reserve System, Dr. Waller served as a professor and the Gilbert F. Schaefer Chair of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. He was also a research fellow with Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies. From 1998 to 2003, Dr. Waller was a professor and the Carol Martin Gatton Chair of Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics at the University of Kentucky. During that time, he was also a research fellow at the Center for European Integration Studies at the University of Bonn. From 1992 to 1994, he served as the director of graduate studies at Indiana University’s Department of Economics, where he also served as associate professor and an assistant professor.
Dr. Waller received a BS in economics from Bemidji State University and an MA and PhD from Washington State University.
Kevin Hassett (from the Hoover Institution):
Kevin Hassett was the Brent R. Nicklas Distinguished Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution from 2019 to January 2025. In early 2025 he was appointed Director of the National Economic Council. Previously he was the senior advisor and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 2017 to 2019.
Prior to his White House service, Hassett was an economist at the American Enterprise Institute. He also served as a senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. His academic background includes being an associate professor of economics and finance at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business, as well as a visiting professor at New York University’s Law School. He has also been a consultant to the U.S. Treasury Department, and an advisor to various presidential campaigns.
Kevin Warsh (from the Hoover Institution):
Kevin Warsh serves as the Shepard Family Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution and lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
He is a partner at Duquesne Family Office and serves on the board of directors of UPS and Coupang, the leading Korean e-commerce company. Warsh is a trustee at the Group of Thirty (G30) and the Panel of Economic Advisers of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
Warsh conducts extensive research in the field of economics and finance. He issued an independent report to the Bank of England proposing reforms in the conduct of monetary policy in the United Kingdom. Parliament adopted the report’s recommendations.
Governor Warsh served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 2006 until 2011. Warsh served as the Federal Reserve’s representative to the Group of Twenty (G-20) and as the Board’s emissary to the emerging and advanced economies in Asia. In addition, he was Administrative Governor, managing and overseeing the Board’s operations, personnel, and financial performance.
Prior to his appointment to the Board, from 2002 until 2006, Warsh served as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Executive Secretary of the White House National Economic Council. Previously, Warsh was a member of the Mergers & Acquisitions department at Morgan Stanley & Co. in New York, serving as Vice President and Executive Director.
Warsh received his A.B. from Stanford University and J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Michelle Bowman (from the Federal Reserve):
Michelle W. Bowman took office as the Vice Chair for Supervision of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on June 9, 2025, for a four-year term. Ms. Bowman has served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System since taking office on November 26, 2018, to fill an unexpired term ending January 31, 2020. She was reappointed to the Board on January 23, 2020, and sworn in on January 30, 2020, for a term ending January 31, 2034.
Prior to her appointment to the Board, Ms. Bowman served as the state bank commissioner of Kansas from January 2017 to November 2018. She also served as vice president of Farmers & Drovers Bank in Kansas from 2010 to 2017.
In addition to her experience in the banking industry, Ms. Bowman worked in Washington, D.C. for Senator Bob Dole of Kansas from 1995 to 1996 and served as a counsel to the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight between 1997 and 2002. In 2002, Ms. Bowman became director of congressional and intergovernmental affairs at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. From 2003 to 2004, she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary and policy advisor to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.
Following her time in Washington, D.C., Ms. Bowman led a government and public affairs consultancy based in London before returning to Kansas in 2010.
Ms. Bowman received a BS in advertising and journalism from the University of Kansas and a JD from the Washburn University School of Law. She is a member of the New York Bar.
Ms. Bowman is married with two children.
Rick Rieder (from BlackRock Global):
Rick Rieder, Senior Managing Director, is BlackRock’s Chief Investment Officer of Global Fixed Income, Head of the Fundamental Fixed Income business and Head of the Global Allocation Investment Team.
Responsible for managing roughly $2.4 trillion in assets, Mr. Rieder is a member of BlackRock’s Global Executive Committee (GEC) and its GEC Investment Sub-Committee. He also is Chairman of the firm-wide BlackRock Investment Council.
Mr. Rieder currently serves on the Alphabet/Google Investment Advisory Committee and the UBS Research Advisory Board. He was nominated for Outstanding Portfolio Manager by Morningstar in 2021, was awarded the Global Unconstrained Fixed Income Manager of the Year for 2015 by Institutional Investor, was nominated for Fixed Income Manager of the Year by Institutional Investor for 2014 and was inducted into the Fixed Income Analysts Society Fixed Income Hall of Fame in 2013.
Mr. Rieder has served as Vice Chairman and member of the Borrowing Committee for the U.S. Treasury and member of the Federal Reserve’s Investment Advisory Committee on Financial Markets.
Before joining BlackRock in 2009, Mr. Rieder was President and Chief Executive Officer of R3 Capital Partners. From 1987 to 2008, he was with Lehman Brothers where he was head of the firm’s Global Principal Strategies team, a global proprietary investment platform. He was also global head of the firm’s credit businesses, Chairman of the Corporate Bond and Loan Capital Commitment Committee and a member of the Board of Trustees for the corporate pension fund. Before joining Lehman Brothers, Mr. Rieder was a credit analyst at SunTrust Banks in Atlanta.
Mr. Rieder earned a BBA degree in Finance from Emory University in 1983 and an MBA degree from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1987. He is a member of the board of Emory University, Emory’s Goizueta Business School, and the University’s Finance Committee, and is the Vice Chairman of the Investment Committee. Mr. Rieder is founder and chairman of the Goizueta Business School’s BBA investment fund and community financial literacy outreach program, Graduation Generation. Mr. Rieder serves as Chairman and President of the Board of Education for North Star Academy’s fourteen Charter Schools in Newark, NJ. He is on the Board of the BlackRock Foundation, the Board of Advisors for the Hospital for Special Surgery, and the Board of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Newark and Essex County. Mr. Rieder formerly served on the Board and National Leadership Council of the Communities in Schools Educational Foundation in Atlanta, and Trustee for the U.S. Olympic Foundation. Mr. Rieder was honored at the Choose Success Awards ceremony in Atlanta in 2015 for his dedication to public education in Atlanta through CIS and Graduation Generation.
Action Line: Whoever Trump picks could affect the trajectory of interest rates for savers and investors for years to come. Your Survival Guy will be watching with interest. Click here to subscribe to my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter.
