The Chairman Without a Dot

At 2:00 p.m. ET, Kevin Warsh chairs his first FOMC meeting. The rate stays at 3.50–3.75%. That part is settled. What is not settled is whether the chairman submits a dot to the plot he has spent years calling a mistake—and whether today marks the beginning of the end of the instrument Wall Street has priced off since 2012.

Somewhere inside the Eccles Building this morning, 18 Federal Reserve officials are filling out their Summary of Economic Projections. Each one writes down a number: where they think the federal funds rate should be at the end of this year, next year, and the year after that. Those numbers become dots on a chart. That chart has moved trillions of dollars since Ben Bernanke introduced it in January 2012.

Kevin Warsh, the 17th man to chair the Federal Reserve, may not fill his in. Goldman Sachs economist David Mericle wrote that the bank assumes Warsh will not submit dots “in light of his past criticism of forward guidance, but we are not sure.” Bank of America’s Aditya Bhave expects the same. TD Securities went further, calling it “a more deliberate way of minimizing any hawkish message that might stem from the June dot plot.”

What the dots said in March. The median projection pointed to one 25-basis-point cut by year-end, putting the target range at 3.25–3.50%. But the distribution was already splitting: seven officials saw no cuts and seven saw one. Only one official projected a hike, and that was for 2027. Powell, in his final meeting as chair, called the balance “meaningful movement toward fewer cuts.” Stephen Miran, the former governor who consistently submitted the lowest dot, had already departed the board to make room for Warsh. His dot is gone.

What the dots may say today. Bank of America warned that at least three voting members could project rate hikes in 2026. If that happens, the median almost certainly shifts to zero cuts for the year. That would be a formal acknowledgment of what futures markets have already priced: no move in either direction until at least 2027. The 10-year Treasury, sitting at 4.47% as of Tuesday’s close, reflects a market that has already stopped waiting for relief.

The backdrop makes the math harder, not easier. Headline CPI ran at 4.2% in May, the highest since April 2023, driven by a 23.5% annual spike in energy costs from the Iran war. But core CPI printed 0.2% month-over-month, below the 0.3% consensus, and shelter rose just 0.3%, half the April pace. That is a central bank looking at a 130-basis-point spread between headline and core inflation, with the headline driver now reversing as oil has fallen 30% from its peak. A peace deal that reopens the Strait of Hormuz turns the biggest inflationary impulse of 2026 into a deflationary one by autumn.

The real shift is not the number. Warsh told the Senate Banking Committee in April: “I don’t believe in forward guidance. I don’t believe that I should be previewing for you what a future decision might be.” He has discussed reducing the frequency of FOMC meetings from eight to as few as four per year, cutting the number of press conferences, and reviewing whether the dot plot should exist at all. If he withholds his own projection today, it is not because he is unprepared. It is because he is demonstrating what the Fed under his leadership will look like: a central bank that responds to data rather than defending a forecast it published three months earlier.

There is a political dimension. Trump appointed Warsh expecting rate cuts. Warsh promised nothing. Submitting a dot that sits at or above the current rate would reveal a chairman more hawkish than his predecessor’s most dovish governor. Withholding the dot avoids the confrontation. But it also removes the one instrument that told markets where the chairman himself thought rates were heading.

Meanwhile, the rest of the board is moving in the same direction, even if by a different path. Across the Pacific, the Bank of Japan raised to 1.00% for the first time in three decades. The yen carry trade that funded a generation of risk-on bets gets more expensive by the quarter. SpaceX, four days public, has already passed Amazon by market cap and agreed to acquire Cursor for $60 billion in stock. The Dow hit a record while the Nasdaq fell more than 1%. Rotation showed up in the closing prints.