Banking and Finance Law Daily Wrap Up, FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM—Fed sets up task forces to examine monetary policy topics, (Jul 10, 2026)

By Jeff Williams

The Fed said the task forces will operate independently and submit their findings to the Federal Open Market Committee

With the stated goal of examining “areas central to the broad conduct of monetary policy,” the Federal Reserve has announced the leadership and objectives of task forces on communications, balance sheet policy, data sources, productivity and jobs, and inflation frameworks.

“The U.S. economy has changed significantly over the last generation, and never more so than right now,” new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh said in a press release. “Each task force will carefully consider whether policymakers' means and methods, analytical tools and policy approaches can be improved upon.”

Warsh said he is “honored that the best minds from a range of disciplines have agreed to work with us to sharpen our performance as an institution,” adding: “The goal is straightforward: to ensure the Fed is best positioned to achieve our objectives in this consequential time."

The task forces, supported by Fed staff, will operate independently, “with a mandate to follow the evidence, provide candid feedback, and produce rigorous findings for the Federal Open Market Committee.”

Tasks and Leadership. The task force on communications will “review how the Federal Reserve conveys policy deliberations and decisions amid uncertainty,” led by Peter R. Fisher, professor of practice at the University of Washington Foster School of Business; Arminio Fraga, founder and chairman of Gávea Investimentos and the former president of the Central Bank of Brazil; and Mervyn King, former governor of the Bank of England.

The balance sheet task force will be responsible for examining the “costs, benefits, and institutional implications of the Federal Reserve's current balance sheet regime,” with Karen Dynan, professor of economics at Harvard University; Raghuram Rajan, professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a former governor of the Reserve Bank of India; and Jeremy Stein, professor of economics at Harvard University and former Fed governor named as its leaders, the release said.

The data task force is slated to be led by Raj Chetty, professor of economics at Harvard University; Doug McMillon, former president and chief executive officer of Walmart, Inc.; and Kevin Murphy, professor of economics at the University of Chicago. The task force will seek to “[i]mprove the quality and timeliness of real economic signals that inform the Federal Reserve's policy judgments,” the Fed said.

The task force on productivity and jobs will “[a]ssess the economic impact of new general-purpose technologies, including artificial intelligence, to inform the Federal Reserve's policy judgments,” with Marc Andreessen, co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz; Charles I. Jones, professor of economics at Stanford University and currently on leave from Anthropic; and Asha Sharma, executive vice president and XBOX CEO at Microsoft Corp. tapped as its leaders.

The inflation frameworks task force will “[r]evisit how the Federal Reserve understands and responds to the drivers of inflation,” the Fed said. Greg Mankiw, professor of economics at Harvard University and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers; Thomas Sargent, professor of economics at New York University and a Nobel laureate; and William White, senior fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute and former economic adviser at the Bank for International Settlements.

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