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Bloomberg | July 9, 2026 | Authors: Enda Curran and Maya Prakash |

Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh announced the leadership of five task forces that will examine the central bank’s approach to key aspects of policy making, with an eye toward potentially enacting sweeping changes.

The leaders of the task forces include prominent academics, former central bankers and corporate executives who have been asked to look at the Fed’s communications strategy, $6.7 trillion balance sheet, use and reliance on existing data sources, productivity and jobs and inflation frameworks. Warsh, who became Fed chief in May, entered the job having called for “regime change” at the central bank and a shakeup of how it conducts policy.

“Each task force will carefully consider whether policymakers’ means and methods, analytical tools and policy approaches can be improved upon,” Warsh said in a statement on Thursday. “The goal is straightforward: to ensure the Fed is best positioned to achieve our objectives in this consequential time,” he said.

Warsh tapped several former policymakers for the task forces, including former Bank of England Governor Mervyn King, who led the UK’s central bank through the 2008-09 financial crisis, and former Brazil Central Bank President Arminio Fraga, who is noted for his defense of the country’s central-bank independence from political interference. Raghuram Rajan, former governor of the Reserve Bank of India who was noted for his early warnings ahead of the global financial crisis, will also co-lead one of the groups.

Other names include Karen Dynan of Harvard University, who previously held top roles at the Treasury Department during the Obama administration, and former Walmart Inc. Chief Executive Doug McMillon.

Joe Brusuelas, the chief economist at RSM US said the list of leaders will add experience to the task forces, though he cautioned they will face challenges, too. “It’s a very impressive list that’s been put forward by Chair Warsh that I’m confident will inform the discussion around the substantive topics,” Brusuelas said. “However, the Fed already has an army of Ph.D.s that had investigated these areas, so I’m not exactly convinced that this is going to shed much light into how we understand productivity and AI,” he added, referring to one of the task forces.

The groups are expected to share their conclusions by year-end and their outside experts will be supported by Fed staff, Warsh said in June when announcing the task forces.

Warsh on Thursday called the task force leaders “the best minds from a range of disciplines.” They are:

Communications
• Peter R. Fisher, professor of practice, Foster School of Business, University of Washington
• Arminio Fraga, founder and chairman, Gávea Investimentos; former president, Central Bank of Brazil
• Mervyn King, former governor, Bank of England

Balance Sheet Policy
• Karen Dynan, professor of economics, Harvard University
• Raghuram Rajan, professor of finance, University of Chicago Booth School of Business; former governor, Reserve Bank of India
• Jeremy Stein, professor of economics, Harvard University; former governor, Federal Reserve Board

Data
• Raj Chetty, professor of economics, Harvard University
• Doug McMillon, former president and CEO, Walmart Inc.
• Kevin Murphy, professor of economics, University of Chicago

Productivity and Jobs
• Marc Andreessen, cofounder and general partner, Andreessen Horowitz
• Charles I. Jones, professor of economics, Stanford University, currently on leave at Anthropic
• Asha Sharma, executive vice president and XBOX CEO, Microsoft Corp.

Inflation Frameworks
• Greg Mankiw, professor of economics, Harvard University; former chairman, Council of Economic Advisers
• Thomas Sargent, professor of economics, New York University; Nobel laureate
• William White, senior fellow, C.D. Howe Institute; former economic adviser, Bank for International Settlements