Who is Kevin Warsh? Heres what you need to know about his path to the Fed

President Trump’s pick to succeed Jerome Powell as chair of the Federal Reserve is an Albany native with an Ivy League pedigree who married into the Estée Lauder fortune.Kevin Warsh, 55, was among the candidates for the Fed chair job back in 2017, when Trump passed him over in favor of Powell — explaining that part of the problem was that Warsh looked too young for the job.This time around, Trump — who has soured on Powell over the central bank’s reluctance to slash interest rates — has warmed to Warsh, a well-connected investment banker with ties to some of Wall Street’s most powerful players.After graduating from Stanford and then Harvard Law School, Warsh worked in the mergers and acquisitions group at Morgan Stanley for seven years, eventually becoming the unit’s vice president.In 2002, he left Morgan Stanley to join the George W.Bush White House as a senior economic policy aide.

That same year, Warsh wed Jane Lauder, the daughter of billionaire Estée Lauder cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, the Republican mega-donor and former US ambassador to Austria.Lauder has had a decades-long relationship with Trump, as both studied together at Wharton Business School.In 2006, Bush nominated Warsh to the position of Fed governor, making him, at age 35, one of the youngest in Fed history to be confirmed by the Senate.During the 2008 financial crisis, Warsh, who had the ear of then-chair Ben Bernanke, used his Wall Street connections to help broker the sale of failing banks.

Fed watchers credited Warsh with acting as a liaison as he helped facilitate JPMorgan Chase’s acquisition of Bear Stearns.Warsh also advocated against a bailout of Lehman Brothers, the highly leveraged investment bank that was overexposed to real estate and mortgage-linked assets just as the housing market collapsed.As panic mounted over Lehman’s fate in September 2008, Warsh privately argued that another bailout would reinforce the belief that Wall Street firms would always be protecte...