Trump Just Paused The 2026 Fed Reset

On May 15th, the most powerful financial job in the world was supposed to change hands. This is the person that controls your mortgage rate, how much inflation is out there, and how much money is being printed. Well now, because of a criminal investigation and because of new changes by the Senate, there's a chance that this could be delayed. So if you're an investor, you want to pay attention to this video because these changes that we might be seeing with the Federal Reserve Bank have a direct impact with your money, the stock market, and inflation. So let me break this all down. The position that I'm talking about is the chairman, meaning head at the Federal Reserve Bank. The Federal Reserve Bank is the central bank here in the United States. And although they're called the Federal Reserve Bank, they're actually not a bank because you and I can't go there to deposit money. They're not a reserve because they're not sitting on any cash reserves and they're not actually federal, which means they're not a part of the United States government. But they are the most powerful central bank in the world because the Federal Reserve Bank has the ability to control the monetary supply, meaning control money in the United States because they can do two things. Number one is they can control interest rates. That means they can control the rates that banks borrow money at, which influences your mortgage rate, your car loan rate, and it can influence how much interest businesses have to pay when they borrow money. And they also have the ability to rent money. So when the United States government goes out and spends money that they don't have, which they've been doing because we now have 39 some trillion dollars of debt, the Federal Reserve Bank can print that money out of thin air, lend it to the United States government, and then the government can spend that money. Obviously, there's a consequence to a bunch of money printing, which is inflation, but that's not the topic that I want to talk about today. The reason why this matters so much is throughout 2025, President Trump kept saying that the Federal Reserve Bank needs to cut interest rates. He was demanding that Jerome Powell, who has been the chairman at the Federal Reserve Bank, cut interest rates because President Trump wants the lowest interest rates of any developed country in the world. Well, the Federal Reserve Bank said no. That made President Trump very angry. Now, you might say, well, why didn't Trump just fire the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank? He couldn't because remember what I said just a minute ago. The Federal Reserve Bank is not federal. They're not a part of the United States government, but the current chairman at the Federal Reserve Bank, Jerome Powell, his term expires on May 15th. This gives the president, part of the government here, the ability to nominate a new chairman at the Federal Reserve Bank, and President Trump has nominated somebody by the name of Kevin Walsh, and President Trump believes that Kevin Walsh will be more likely to listen to what Trump says and cut interest rates. But now, things are looking a little bit shaky because there are some new developments going on, which should completely change the way that this transition process works. There are three blockers happening at the exact same time. Number one and the most basic is that the paperwork has not been submitted yet. President Trump nominated Kevin Walsh back on March 4th, 2026. Fast forward about three weeks and his paperwork still hasn't been submitted. Now, the reason why is that Kevin Walsh is married to the granddaughter of Estee Lauder, which is one of the wealthiest families in America, so there's a lot of financial ties that is taking longer to process. In any case, what this means is that if the paperwork is not submitted, the hearing cannot be scheduled. But that's not that big of a deal. Let's move on to number two. The second block has to do with what's going on at the Senate. Let's go back a little bit. Remember when I said that the Federal Reserve Bank is not federal and the president cannot fire the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank? Well, although President Trump couldn't fire Jerome Powell, one of the things that he did was put a lot of pressure on him to leave. One of those ways was starting a criminal investigation on Jerome Powell for not using funds properly for the buildings at the Federal Reserve Bank as a way to essentially scare him to leave. Here's why that matters. There's a Republican senator out of North Carolina, Senator Tillis, who must vote in favor of Kevin Walsh in order for Kevin Walsh to actually be nominated. And he has said openly that he is not going to vote for any nomination. He's going to vote against everybody until this criminal investigation on Jerome Powell is dropped. Why? Because according to Jerome Powell, this criminal investigation has nothing to do with the building. It's a way to pressure and scare Powell into leaving. And that's not all. Now, Jerome Powell is also threatening not to leave until the criminal investigation is over on him as well. All of these are essentially trying to put pressure on the Trump administration to drop the criminal charges on Jerome Powell, which could also delay the nomination of Kevin Walsh. And this brings me to point number three. By the way, we've been covering all of this in Market Briefs. Market Briefs is my free financial newsletter for investors where every day my team is working to break down what's happening in things like the economy, housing, stocks, crypto, and global markets into a fun, witty, and easy to read newsletter. You can read it in less than five minutes every morning. And we have hundreds of thousands of investors that read Market Briefs every single day. So if you have not subscribed yet, what are you waiting for? You're going to love it. And if you don't, well, you can unsubscribe at any time because it's free. So if you have not joined Market Briefs yet, I have the link for you to join down in the description below. And the newest potential roadblock is a new concern from the Senate because Senator Elizabeth Warren just brought up concerns with Kevin Walsh and the Epstein files. And if that doesn't get resolved, that could potentially delay his nomination as well. I'm not going to go too deep into this because this goes into a very different topic, but this is why now the nomination of the new chairman at the Federal Reserve Bank could be delayed. With that, let's talk about what this means for your money and investments. There are really only two potential outcomes, and let's understand both. Outcome number one is that Walsh gets nominated by May 15th, like scheduled or slightly after. Outcome number two is that there is a long delay. Now, depending on what happens, it can move markets and it can change money. So let's break this down. If there is a delay, what that means is that Jerome Powell is going to stay in place, which means things are going to stay as they are. Jerome Powell has said that now, especially after the conflict in the Middle East, he's not really considering cutting interest rates in 2026. So if there is a delay, things will stay as is. On the flip side, if Kevin Walsh is nominated by May 15th and he comes in, then we could start to see more changes at the Federal Reserve Bank. I'm going to talk about what those changes are in just a minute, but the reason why this matters is because one thing that Wall Street hates is uncertainty. Anytime you see uncertainty in the markets, anytime you see uncertainty in the economy, anytime you see uncertainty with things happening in the Middle East, anytime you see uncertainty with oil prices, the stock market moves quickly up and down, creates more volatility, people panic, it creates concerns about retirement, all that other stuff. Wall Street hates uncertainty, which is why you want to pay attention to this. But if Kevin Walsh does get nominated by May 15th, then we could start to see more of a change of what's happening at the Federal Reserve Bank. Because prior to the conflict in the Middle East, Kevin Walsh has said that he wants to do two things. Number one, he wants to cut interest rates aggressively, and number two, he wants to tighten the balance sheet. Now, what does that mean? Kevin Walsh says he wants to cut interest rates as a way to make mortgages cheaper, to make borrowing cheaper for cars and businesses, but the concern is if you lower mortgage rates and car loan rates and all the other interest rates, it's going to make inflation worse because then a whole lot of dollars are going to enter our economy. And he says that you can combat this inflation problem by doing something called tightening the balance sheet, essentially pulling money out of our economy. Will that work? We'll ultimately see, but that could have some changes on the economy. Now, there's two things you have to understand about this. Thing number one, prior to Kevin Walsh being selected as the next chairman at the Federal Reserve Bank, he used to be a part of the Federal Reserve Bank back during the 2008 crash. And during that time, when the markets were crashing in 2008, the Federal Reserve Bank was cutting interest rates aggressively and printing a lot of money to stimulate the economy. Well, during that time, Kevin Walsh was a critic of what the Federal Reserve Bank was doing. He said that the Fed should not be cutting interest rates. He said that the Fed should not be printing money because he said that that is going to create a dollar crisis. It's going to put our economy into a very bad situation. So, it sounds like historically, Kevin Walsh was somebody that wanted to protect the dollar. And so now, the thought is, is he going to continue with that mindset of wanting to protect the dollar, or will he be willing to create more inflation to stimulate the economy, which will hurt the dollar? Ultimately, time will tell. The other thing that you have to understand, which is part number two, is now with the conflict of the Middle East, inflation could become a bigger problem. And if inflation is a bigger problem, that makes it more difficult for the Federal Reserve Bank to cut interest rates and print money. Now, with the conflict in the Middle East, we have seen oil prices skyrocket. That means you have to pay higher gas prices. That means grocery prices get more expensive. That means traveling becomes more expensive. That means shipping and diesel becomes more expensive. That makes inflation worse. We're already seeing an inflation problem. So now, when you have an inflation problem, and then you have this oil crisis, which makes inflation worse, well, it becomes a lot more difficult to try to cut interest rates, because the cutting of interest rates could spike inflation even more. So we don't know what Kevin Warsh will be doing after. But if we now start to connect the dots through history, in the 1970s, we had a very similar economic problem to today, because in the 1970s, we had an inflation problem, followed by an oil crisis. That then led to the Federal Reserve Bank being forced to save the dollar by raising interest rates aggressively. It got to the point where your mortgage went from 5, 6, 7 percent up to 18 percent, 20 percent a year. Extremely high mortgage rates, which induced a deep recession, a slowdown in the economy, but it saved the dollar. Now, Kevin Warsh, 10, 15 years ago, said, we need higher interest rates, we need to save the dollar, we need to save the economy. Will he still have that same mindset today, when President Trump says, we want the lowest interest rates of any developed country? President Trump says, we're going to put in a new chairman who is going to bring these lower interest rates. Well, now, when push comes to shove, and Kevin Warsh has to make the decision of, are we going to fight inflation? Or are we going to fight a slowing economy? It will be very interesting. Why does this matter? Because we don't know when this switch is going to happen due to these three delays. We know what Jerome Powell is going to do. That gives some certainty. He's talked about what he's going to do. He does not want to raise interest rates. He does not want to cut interest rates. He wants to play the wait and see method. That gives certainty to Wall Street. This creates uncertainty. And we also don't know when Kevin Warsh is going to be nominated, when he's going to enter. Anytime you hear uncertainty, that means volatility in the stock market. That's what you want to pay attention to. Because as we get closer and closer to May 15th, Wall Street are going to be watching this. Is Kevin Warsh coming in? Is he going to start changing his tone? What's going to be happening in the Middle East? What's going on with inflation? Because all of these things could push Kevin Warsh to make bigger changes or advocate for bigger changes, which could change money. It could change inflation. It could change your interest rate on your mortgage. But it can also drastically impact the stock market in the United States and globally. That's why you want to pay attention to this. Now, despite all that, what does this mean for you as an investor? You don't want to panic. You don't want to freak out. You want to remember your strategy. As a passive investor, remember, the way that you win is a strategy that I like to teach called A-B-B. Always be buying. Now, I've got to give you that disclosure. Investing has risks. You are never guaranteed to make money when you invest. In fact, you will lose money at some point. So make sure you always do your own due diligence and never blindly trust a random guy on YouTube. The way that you win as a passive investor, if you're just investing in something like the S&P 500 or the Dow Jones or the Nasdaq or whatever, these broad indexes, you just set up a system where every week, every two weeks, every month, you just keep buying these funds, whether they're up, whether they're down. And you don't change it ever. In fact, the only time you should change it is when markets go down. You use it as an opportunity to buy more. For those of you that are active investors that want to be more involved, which nowadays, it really becomes a lot more important for even passive investors to have some active investing on their side because that higher risk can lead to higher returns. And because of inflation, people just need more money to retire. The active investing side is now understanding where money is going to move and now using downturns as opportunities to buy more of good assets at a discounted price. What that means is when people are freaking out, use it as an opportunity to buy. Stay calm when things are going up. Don't get greedy. Keep your emotions in check because the most difficult part of investing is not the research. It's not picking the best stock. It's holding on when people go crazy. That's why the best investors on the planet are dead people. It is brokerage accounts that no longer have somebody going in and panic selling. It sounds crazy, but if you can stay calm and you can hold good investments through crazy times and potentially buy more during the downturns, that gives you the opportunity to build wealth. So if you want to stay up to date on what's happening with this, again, Market Briefs is a free resource for you. I have that for you down in the description. And if you got value out of this video, the best thank you is a referral. So if you could, please share this video with a friend, family member, colleague, or fellow investor. That way we can continue to spread this type of financial education. Thank you. President Trump just confirmed that he wants to get rid of your income tax. Take a listen. I believe the tariffs paid for by foreign countries will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love.