New Delhi, Aug. 13 -- Kevin Warsh enjoys marking a "new chapter". The newish chair of the Federal Reserve has invoked that writerly metaphor at nearly every public appearance since taking charge in May. He wants markets, politicians and households to understand that now things at the Fed will be different. Yet the first months of his tenure have stood out not for novelty but for continuity.

Leaf back a year, to the summer of 2025. Then, Jerome Powell's Fed was uncomfortably caught between wobbly jobs numbers and above-target inflation, fuelled by tariffs: a quintessential but fiddly central-banking dilemma. To that, Donald Trump added a more unusual political bind. The president's attempt to sack Lisa Cook, a Fed governor, over alleged w...