Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh appears to have foregone submitting an interest rate projection in the central bank's June 2026 dot plot, a break from standard practice that has drawn immediate attention just three weeks into his tenure.

Key Highlights

  • The Fed's June 2026 dot plot contained only 18 submissions despite a full slate of 19 policymakers.
  • Warsh is the only addition to the Fed's policymaking table since the last round of projections.
  • Warsh has long criticised forward guidance, arguing it locks policymakers into rate paths without due regard to changing economic data.
  • Only 17 of 19 policymakers submitted projections for 2028, the Fed also confirmed.

The Federal Reserve's quarterly dot plot released on June 17, 2026 contained just 18 individual rate-path submissions, one short of the full complement of 19 policymakers. The Fed did not identify the policymaker who did not submit projections.

Analysts are broadly attributing the omission to Warsh, given that he is the only new addition to the Fed's policymaking table since the last round of quarterly forecasts, and given his well-documented scepticism toward the dot plot mechanism itself. Warsh has argued over many years that forward guidance locks policymakers into a specific rate path without adequate flexibility to respond to shifting economic data, a view that sits in tension with the dot plot's core purpose.

The dot plot has been published four times annually since 2012, providing the public with an anonymised view of where individual policymakers see interest rates heading. It has become a central tool in the Fed's broader move toward greater transparency, which policymakers have argued makes monetary policy more effective by anchoring investor and public expectations around the likely rate path.

Fed officials themselves acknowledge the dot plot's limitations. It does not, for instance, reveal how each policymaker's specific forecasts for inflation or the labour market connect to their rate-path view, making the submissions informative but incomplete as a signal of future policy.

The only prior instance of a Fed policymaker withholding a dot was former St Louis Fed president James Bullard, who submitted near-term rate projections but declined to provide a longer-run neutral rate estimate. Warsh's apparent omission goes further, covering the full rate-path submission, and arrives at his very first meeting as chair.

The move adds immediate fuel to speculation about whether Warsh intends to reshape the Fed's communication strategy more broadly as part of the regime change he has publicly signalled since his appointment. Whether the omission reflects a deliberate policy stance or simply reflects the practicalities of settling into a new role at the start of his tenure remains formally unclear, as the Fed has not commented on the identity of the missing submission.