Warsh, 56, a former Fed governor himself, has said that there should be less “forward guidance” from the central bank than under his predecessor, Jerome Powell. Forward guidance is essentially communication about what the Fed predicts interest rate and policy decisions will be. Warsh has also set up a task force to look into how best to communicate with the public.

The chairman has said repeatedly that the Federal Open Market Committee is laser-focused on driving down inflation. Still, those hoping for answers about how Warsh hopes to accomplish that and what steps the Fed might take in the coming months were left disappointed and with more questions than answers after last week’s FOMC meeting, where officials declined to raise interest rates.

“There was a disconnect — certainly in the minds of those covering it in the press, and I think also in the markets — between his early strong rhetoric, emphasizing so emphatically that the committee will deliver price stability … and the combination of no action in the meeting and the lack of explanation,” Dennis Lockhart, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, told the Washington Examiner.

“Not only did he not really say anything, he just didn’t provide a lot of explanation of what would trigger a rate hike in the future,” Lockhart, who was a Fed president from 2007 to 2017, added.

Still, Lockhart emphasized that it is still quite early in Warsh’s tenure and that he should be given some time.

Warsh’s changes in communication came soon after even the first meeting, when the post-meeting statement announcing the FOMC’s policy decision was much shorter and less detailed than those under Powell. Some also think that Warsh could limit press conferences, although he said that — at least until the end of this year — he will continue to hold the post-meeting conferences.

Under Powell, the Fed began holding press conferences every single meeting — eight times per year. That was up from under Powell’s predecessor, Janet Yellen, who held four post-meeting press conferences per year.

After a two-day meeting in Washington, the FOMC announced last Wednesday that it would hold its rate target at a range of 3.5%-3.75%. But, notably, there were three dissents: Beth Hammack, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland; Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis; and Lorie Logan, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. All three preferred a quarter-percentage-point increase.

During the post-meeting press conference, Warsh didn’t give too much further insight into what he described as “family fights” over interest rate policy around the FOMC table, or what might be coming next.

He told reporters that there was a large majority in support of the decision to hold rates, but said there was “nothing inertial” about the discussion and that it included “robust discussion” about what can be done to get inflation back to healthy levels.

“Could people come to different conclusions? Absolutely,” Warsh added later. “But my own judgment is: this is a period of watchful thinking, not watchful waiting, and I think the score on that vote was unanimous.”

Markets didn’t like the lack of clarity.

Bank of America, for instance, said that the press conference “came across as dovish” and compared the market reaction to credibility shocks that central banks in emerging markets face.

“A steeper curve, lower equities and a weaker dollar is the typical price action associated with credibility shocks faced by EM central banks,” the bank said.

Likewise, Citadel Securities pointed out that equities and the dollar weakened following the meeting, among other market reactions.

“Investors may interpret that combination less as a clean tightening in response to stronger growth and more as a challenge to the credibility or clarity of the policy framework,” the note said. “It is also an uncomfortable outcome in a market already unsettled by rising oil prices amidst the conflict with Iran and the accelerating unwind in AI momentum.”

Warsh’s outlook on forward guidance and how he has communicated so far is a marked departure from Powell, according to Mark Hamrick, chief economic analyst for the Hamrick Brief.

“He’s an eloquent enough speaker, but certainly at the last two news conferences, he left markets and pretty much everybody else scratching their heads, wondering, ‘What did he say?’” Hamrick told the Washington Examiner.

Warsh has been upfront about changes on the communications front, particularly regarding forward guidance.

Forward guidance became routine after the 2008 financial crisis, when the Fed set its interest rate target at zero and could lower it no further. With a goal of economic stimulus, officials pledged to keep monetary policy looser for longer.

Even with the forward guidance under Powell, Ryan Young, a senior economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said that officials “basically wing it from meeting to meeting.”

“Even people who want to be able to predict what the Fed is doing have problems with forward guidance because if there’s one thing about the Fed’s predictions that’s always true, it’s that they’re always wrong,” Young told the Washington Examiner.

Lockhart said it seems that Warsh might be trying to revert the Fed to a time before former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s tenure, when there was much less forward guidance and explanation from the central bank to the public and markets.

For instance, during that time, there were no regular post-meeting press conferences and fewer speeches more generally. There was also no Summary of Economic Projections, which are charts and graphs the Fed releases every other meeting showing officials’ estimates for the path of interest rates, GDP, and inflation.

“And it may have worked during that period, but the economy and the markets have evolved, and they’ve also been trained, if you will, on certain expectations of communication,” he said. “So I’m a little bit concerned that there’s a kind of nostalgia reversion to a past period that doesn’t fit with current circumstances, modern circumstances.”

Lockhart said he explicitly remembered that when he was on the FOMC, Bernanke put an emphasis on advocating transparency and communication, particularly after the financial crisis and recession, so that the Fed’s actions and intentions couldn’t be misinterpreted and lead to more volatility.

In previous decades, the Fed engaged in even less communication. For example, the central bank would not announce its decisions regarding its interest rate target. Traders would have to divine its decisions afterward based on what the Fed was doing in bond markets.

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Hamrick pointed out that Warsh is an admirer of the late Alan Greenspan, who was chairman of the Fed from 1987 to 2006.

“But, if you were to inject someone with the same approach to the markets and the job as Alan Greenspan took, that would be a massive step back, thinking about all the tools and methods that have been employed by the chair since then,” Hamrick said, although he said he’s not necessarily suggesting that is what Warsh is trying to do.