New U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh holds a press conference following a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), at the U.S. Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C., U.S. June 17, 2026.
Eric Lee | Reuters
Wednesday’s Federal Open Market Committee statement looked drastically different than those issued after previous meetings, offering one of the first formal signs of the changes promised by new Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh.
The statement released Wednesday contained around 130 words, down from figures above 300 recorded in each of the past two meetings, according to a CNBC analysis of the releases.
Warsh acknowledged a “difference” in the statement early in his first press conference as chair on Wednesday. He said there was no forward guidance, as it was “not well suited for the current policy conjuncture.”
“It’s a bit shorter, a bit simpler and it dispenses with some older language,” Warsh said. “That statement just gives you the facts, as best we can judge it.”
Below is a comparison of Wednesday’s FOMC statement with the one issued after the Fed’s previous policymaking meeting in April.
Text removed from the April statement is in red with a horizontal line through the middle. Text appearing for the first time in the new statement is in red and underlined. Black text appears in both statements.
Wednesday’s release contained no information on how members voted, previously an fixture at the end of releases under former Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Instead, Wednesday’s statement indicated only that it was a unanimous vote.
The latest statement also includes less color on how the Fed views current inflation trends and where it could be going next. However, the statement did say that the Fed is committed to having stable prices.
“What Kevin Warsh is trying to do with this statement is not use the statement to give forward guidance, and I think he did a pretty good job with that,” said David Wessel, senior fellow at Brookings, on CNBC’s “Power Lunch.”
Fed watchers viewed the change as part of a “regime change” Warsh has promised for the central bank. Warsh has criticized how the Fed communicates, arguing that it leads to policy errors and entagles the central bank in markets.
“Warsh’s first FOMC statement left the clear impression that there is a new chair in town,” said Ian Lyngen, head of U.S. rates strategy at BMO.
“The statement was significantly shortened — eliminating the forward guidance,” he said. It gave “only a cursory characterization of the economy as ‘expanding at a solid pace.'”
— CNBC’s Davis Giangiulio and Yun Li contributed to this report.
