u/aurelorba

He's had enough time to settle in and make his first impressions so it's fair to ask who he really is. I figure there are 3 general categories:

Genuine Warsh: He's what he says he is, a traditional inflation and balance sheet hawk. What ever he said to get the nomination, he will talk up the market, shrink the balance sheet [aka quantitative tightening aka shrinking the money supply] and raise rates... eventually. The argument could be made that his 'hold' vote was simply an acknowledgment that the 'raise' votes wouldn't win regardless and he needed to build consensus before moving rates higher. And to be fair knowing when it's time to make interest rate moves to avoid an overreaction is as much art as science.

Political Warsh: Like Nixon's Fed Chair he will do what is asked for political reasons to an extent. He wont accede to Trump's every demand as he knows would be suicidal for the economy but will try to thread the needle between being less hawkish and slavishly following Trump's orders for the good of the Republican Party.

Machiavellian Warsh: His longer term plan to remake their data analytics is really subterfuge to manipulate the data, so that it confirms his own conclusions and then he uses it to manipulate the rest of the board to vote as he wants.

I have no idea which or which part reflects the true Warsh.... not quite accurate. I lean towards Political Warsh and worry about his 'Task Forces' to remake the Fed. What I also wonder about is how Trump was manipulated into selecting him and still defending him after his "hold" vote, blaming it on the rest of the FOMC. I can imagine that some members of his administration who are aware how insane his policies would be finally convinced him that 0% interest rates are not a good idea if you have an inflation problem.

In any case, Fed watching hasn't been this interesting since Greenspan.

I'm one of those people Scott mentioned who no longer watches Real Time anymore. I started watching him during his Politically Incorrect days so I have some idea of his "progression"

I never flamboyantly announced I was done with the show, because that's not me. I just stopped watching for a variety of reasons:

1. The overall quality of guests. Scott and some others excepting, they were mid tier spin meisters of some sort who never had much interesting to say.

2. Probably the biggest reason is the audience. "Hootie" the guy who constantly went Whoooo hooo! through every audience reaction grated like fingernails on chalkboard. And the general response to cheer or boo after every talking point was annoying af. I get the audience response for his stand up segment and New Rules, they are bits. But for the discussion, I wish the audience would STFU

3. Related to 2, indepth discussion meant one person talking for 30 seconds without interruption. It was little more than each guest throwing out 15 second one liner talking points for the audience to react to.

4. Probably least important, Bill's views: While I don't care about the "Bill has/hasn't changed positions" debate, nor even that I think he's dead wrong about some things, but some of them have made me slap my forehead, such as his ignorance on vaccines. Not that he's a skeptic on vaccines per se but he doesn't even understand how they work. More and more his complaints have been pure "Old man yells at clouds" like his solar panel saga. He literally started spouting culture war talking points about schools and kids getting gender reassignment that made him sound like Cletus discovering AOL.

On Scott calling Bill brilliant: I guess people like podcasters, political comedians, and satirists have to glaze each other. Certainly Bill is a skilled comedian but brilliant? I don't think so.

As an aside the Maher subreddit wasn't very interesting either. Sure you get the same snark segment as you do here but the signal to noise ratio was far too low on r/maher.

His speech and word use is surprisingly literate, using terms like sartorial and describing the vandalization of the board: "He is a Hun, a Visigoth, a barbarian at the gate, clamoring for noble Roman blood". It's certainly above the general intelligence level of the department.

Plus his skill at finessing a gaping asshole like Rawls shows innate intelligence.

The man definitely had some university level education. My guess would be he flunked out in year 1 or 2, looked around for a decent paying job to pay off his student loans and thought BPD would be a cushy temporary job.