Kevin Warsh needs to be confirmed as Fed Chair in order to avoid an economic shutdown

Kevin Warsh would like to start as Fed chairman yesterday, but his nomination as the head of the central bank remains in limbo.The longer it does, the more the country’s economy is at risk.With all that’s going on in the world, oil prices rising and inflation looming, it’s easy to forget that Warsh remains sidelined at a particularly vulnerable time for the US economy.

The current Fed chair, Jerome Powell, is of course a lame duck after butting heads with the president over interest rate policy, and President Trump has been doing all he can to remove Powell even before his term ends in May.Trump’s moves to oust Powell — including a DOJ investigation into his testimony over the pricy rehab of the Fed’s headquarters in DC — isn’t sitting well with plenty of financial types and even GOPers, who worry it’s both overblown and an affront to the central bank’s long-held role as an independent agency that controls the money supply.Sen.Thom Tillis, a ranking Republican from North Carolina on the Banking Committee, won’t vote to move Warsh’s nomination to a full Senate vote unless the Powell probe goes away.

A Tillis rep said there was no change to his position as this piece went to press.So here we are at a stalemate with the prospect of Powell remaining in his chair for the foreseeable future.He can wait for a replacement and lead the agency on a “pro tem” basis, while the future of monetary policy is mired in uncertainty.The world isn’t binary, of course: you can dislike Trump’s methods to dump Powell and still see the need for him to go and get Warsh in that job the minute Powell’s term ends.

It goes beyond the economic issues that the conflict with Iran presents.The central bank is an agency in need of reform, and if you do a little reporting on what Warsh intends to do when — or if — he gets in there, you will understand why we need him in the job ASAP.The first reason is we need a Fed chair who understands the limits of the job,...