《经济学周刊》对美联储的异议以及2026年会发生什么

12 December 2025 Richard de Chazal, CFArdechazal@williamblair.com+44 20 7868 4489 Economics Weekly Louis Mukamalmukama@williamblair.com+1 312 364 8867 Dissent at the Fed and What Will Happen William Blair comes to forward guidance and creating better economicstability. If every policy meeting resulted in a knife-edgedecision on rates, this would tend to lower transparencyand weaken forward guidance, which would likely dimin-ish private sector confidence in both investment and There’s been a lot of debate about this in the U.S.that, we’re a very consensus-driven policy committeeand that leads to accusations of groupthink.... But wehave to make a decision every six weeks, we don’t getto kick the can down the road, that means you have People who are accusing us of this—get ready,you might see the least groupthink you’ve seen from the FOMC in a long time....I don’tfind for myself personally the sense that that’sproblematic, it doesn’t mean anything about theChair’s leadership to have disagreements, that’sthe whole point in having a committee—to havedifferent points of view. The only real problem isthat if it gets really down to 7 to 5 for us, and that This is similar to the decision-making process for the Euro-pean Central Bank, which does not publish the voting resultsof its meetings but will often announce whether the vote The Bank of Canada similarly does not publish the resultsof policy votes and strongly favors consensus and unity.The Bank of Japan is more like the Fed, with the outcomeof votes published in the post-meeting statements, butindividual votes are not disclosed until the release of theminutes at a later date—though dissent for the Bank of – Fed Governor Christopher Waller, November 17, This week’s FOMC meeting saw the most dissent since2019, when, similar to this week’s vote, one voted for alarger cut, while two voted for no change in rates. Backthen, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard voted for a50-basis-point cut and Kansas City’s Esther George andBoston’s Eric Rosengren both voted for no change in rates,as opposed to the majority vote for a 25-basis-point cut.This week, Fed Governor Stephen Miran also voted for a It is worth noting that the heads of the central banks arealways part of the majority vote; you never see a dissent-ing vote by one of them. This promotes greater stability, Exhibit 1 shows the cumulative history of the number ofdissents in favor of easing, the number in favor of tighten- The issue of dissent on the board is becoming a muchhotter topic for investors, as questions continue to mountaround the degree of Fed independence and the poten-tial appointment of Kevin Hassett as the new Fed chair.Foreshadowing what might come, at a dinner we attendedin London several weeks ago, Fed Governor Waller statedthat we should get ready for the least groupthink FOMC The Fed is well known for its preference for a show ofunity and consensus on the outcome of its FOMC meet- William Blair The exhibit shows that Fed presidents have dissenteda total of 244 times since 1950. Amazingly, only 18% ofthose have been in favor of an easing policy, as opposed to When it comes to Fed governors, the reverse is true. Since1950, governors have dissented 198 times, but 65% ofthose have been in favor of easing, or three times more Also noteworthy, while the annual number of dissentsfrom presidents has been quite steady throughout this en-tire period, the number of dissents from governors since There are several reasons for the governors’ behaviorwith regard to preferring to ease more than tighten. First,governors are political appointments; they are vetted andchosen by the U.S. president before they are confirmedby the Senate. They reside in Washington and tend tobe more visible, with their views carrying a little moreweight than the regional Fed presidents. They also knowthat the public tends to favor rate cuts versus hikes. Sec-ond, governors are supposed to take a more national per-spective, which includes gauging risks toward financial Every vote on the FOMC counts equally, but not allcommittee members get to vote each time. The FOMC ismade up of 19 members—7 on the board of governorsand 12 regional Fed presidents. All 19 members have achance to contribute their views at each meeting as well These 12 include the 7 Fed governors, who have a perma-nent vote, and only 5 regional Fed presidents, whose votingpower rotates annually among 4 of the presidents while Typically the chair also chooses when they speak at eachmeeting, which is indicative of their style of leadership.Fed Chair Greenspan, for example, liked to speak aftereveryone had spoken so he could assess and rebut (if nec-essary) any views that might not coincide with his own, The fact that dissents have been much more infrequentsince 1990 is likely also a legacy of former Fed Chair AlanGreenspan, who was not a fan of dissent, and, as other Fedchairs have done since, had a tendency to coordinate votesahead of each mee