Warsh is scheduled to deliver a keynote address on Friday at the Kansas City Fed's annual research symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
The conference, with its global audience and intense media coverage, offers U.S. central bank leaders a high-profile way to set a tone or emphasize a message. Former Fed Chair Jerome Powell, for example, used the venue to unveil a new monetary policy framework, then later for a succinct, attention-grabbing pledge to fight inflation that helped cement market expectations for a series of swift rate hikes.
Asked after the July 28-29 meeting about his plans for the speech, Warsh told reporters he had not decided yet, but noted his desire to "frame the big questions. There is a tendency, especially with the proliferation of meetings and press conferences, to get caught up in the myopic."
Since then, the situation has become even more complicated.
Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee, meanwhile, have asked Warsh to provide details on his communications with President Donald Trump, a move that followed a Wall Street Journal report that the two men have been holding regular calls.
In the minutes of the July 28-29 meeting, some of Warsh's colleagues worried that waiting to hike rates would require steeper and costlier increases in borrowing costs later, while others worried that the longer inflation remains above 2% the more likely the public is to lose faith in the Fed's commitment to its target.
"He's clearly finding his feet and operating in a very charged environment," said Maurice Obstfeld, a former International Monetary Fund chief economist who is now an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
"Markets are wondering what's the Fed going to do to address inflation that's persistently above target," he said. "There's certainly the possibility that inflation pressures lead to the need for steeper rate increases down the road, which is why you see some of this action in longer-term yields."
The speech this week "is a perfect opportunity to clarify his thinking," Obstfeld said.
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