Yes, Kevin Warsh Really Did Propose Cutting Fed Press Conferences to Four Times a Year

The claim is accurate. In November 2017, Kevin Warsh — then a frontrunner to replace Janet Yellen as Federal Reserve Chair under the Trump administration — proposed scaling back Fed press conferences from after every policy meeting to a quarterly schedule, four times per year.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the proposal, and Bloomberg and Reuters quickly confirmed it. All three outlets noted that Warsh believed fewer press conferences would reduce markets' over-dependence on Fed signals and give policymakers more room to act between meetings without triggering market disruption. His argument was essentially that the Fed had become too talkative, and that constant communication was boxing it in.

The proposal was notable enough that former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke responded publicly. Writing for the Brookings Institution, Bernanke pushed back directly, arguing that fewer press conferences would actually hurt transparency and reduce the Fed's flexibility — the opposite of what Warsh claimed. It was a rare public disagreement between prominent Fed figures over communication strategy.

For context, the Fed under Yellen had moved toward holding press conferences after all eight annual FOMC meetings, a shift designed to improve openness. Warsh's proposal would have reversed that trend. He was ultimately not chosen; Jerome Powell was nominated and confirmed as Fed Chair in early 2018.

This story spread widely because it touched a nerve. Debates about how much the Fed should communicate — and whether its words move markets too much — are genuinely contested among economists. Warsh's unconventional stance, combined with his high-profile candidacy, made the proposal a lightning rod. If you see this claim presented as false or disputed, the evidence firmly says otherwise.