🇺🇸 Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council at the White House and considered a leading candidate to become the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, reaffirmed on Friday his forecasts that Fed policymakers will cut interest rates at next week's meeting. "This is the right time for the Fed to make a cautious new rate cut," he said on Fox Business. He predicts that a wave of economic growth will occur in early 2026 as the economy recovers from the recent shock related to the federal government shutdown and new factories coming online begin to bear fruit. Hassett also publicly expressed his support for Treasury Secretary Bessent's initiative to establish a residency requirement for the appointment of regional Fed presidents. Hassett stated, "The initial goal of creating all these regional Federal Reserves was to ensure a federal system in which each region, with its specific concerns, could be heard in the decision-making process." On Wednesday, Bessent announced that he would promote new regulations requiring that candidates for the presidency of a regional Federal Reserve have resided in their district for at least three years — a measure that is part of a series of actions aimed at restructuring the institution, following criticisms from the Trump administration that the Fed had overstepped its mandate in monetary policy ("mission creep").
