New Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh holds a press conference after two days of Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC, USA, June 17, 2026.
Eric Lee | Reuters
Wednesday’s Federal Open Market Committee statement alone showed the Federal Reserve is entering a new era under Chairman Kevin Warsh.
The statement released Wednesday contained about 130 words, according to a CNBC analysis of the presentation, which is fewer than the more than 300 words recorded at recent meetings.
Warsh acknowledged the “differences” in the statement Wednesday at the beginning of his first press conference as speaker. He said there was no forward guidance because it “doesn’t really fit the current policy mix.”
“It’s a little shorter, a little simpler and doesn’t need the old wording,” Warsh said. “That statement only represents the facts to the best of our ability.”
Below is a comparison of Wednesday’s FOMC statement with the statement issued after its last policy meeting in April.
Text removed from the April statement is red with a horizontal line down the middle. Text that appears for the first time in a new statement is underlined in red. Both statements display black text.
Wednesday’s release did not include information about how members should vote, which was included at the end of releases under former Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Instead, Wednesday’s statement indicated only that it was a unanimous decision.
The latest statement also didn’t say much about how the Fed views current inflation trends or where they might be headed. But in a statement, the Fed said it would work to stabilize prices.
“What Kevin Warsh is trying to do with this statement is not use it to guide the future. I think he’s done a pretty good job of that,” David Wessel, a senior fellow at Brookings University, said on CNBC’s “Power Lunch.”
Fed watchers see the changes as part of the “systemic changes” Mr. Warsh has promised the central bank. Mr. Warsh was particularly critical of the Fed’s communication methods, arguing that they lead to policy errors and involve the central bank in the market.
“Mr. Warsh’s first FOMC statement left a clear impression that we have a new chairman,” said Ian Lingen, head of U.S. interest rate strategy at BMO.
“The statement has been significantly shortened and forward guidance has been removed,” he said. “The report only broadly characterized the economy as ‘expanding at a steady pace,'” the report said.
— CNBC’s Davis Giangiulio, Jeff Cox, Steve Liesman and Yun Li contributed to this report.
