For the first time since 1992, a Fed governor and president dissented together, as Kevin Warsh says the ‘monetary medicine’ is starting to work

The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady on Wednesday, six days before the midterm elections. Only two officials wanted to raise them, and one was Lisa Cook, the Fed governor President Donald Trump has tried to fire.

The Federal Open Market Committee voted 10-2 to keep its benchmark rate at 3.75% to 4%. Cook was joined by Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack, both “who preferred to raise the target range for the federal funds rate by 1/4 percentage point at this meeting,” the Fed said in its statement.

The vote came with two firsts: It was Cook’s first dissent since she joined the board in 2022. And it was also the first time a Fed governor and a regional bank president dissented on the same side since October 1992. Then, Governor Lawrence Lindsey and Cleveland Fed President Jerry Jordan both wanted the Fed to cut rates right away, while Governor John LaWare and St. Louis Fed President Thomas Melzer dissented together on the other side.

Fed records show how rare the pairing has become since then. In 1993, governors Wayne Angell and Lindsey twice dissented together in favor of higher rates, but no president joined them. When Philadelphia Fed President Edward Boehne dissented alongside Angell that May, he objected from the opposite direction. LaWare dissented alone in December 1994, when he wanted an immediate hike.

But after that stretch, governors largely stopped dissenting. Mark Olson broke ranks alone in 2005, and Michelle Bowman did the same in 2024.

Since then, governors and presidents have dissented at the same meeting, but on opposite sides. In October 2025, Governor Stephen Miran pushed for a bigger cut as Kansas City Fed President Jeff Schmid opposed cutting at all. In April, Miran wanted a cut while Hammack, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, and Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan objected to the statement’s signal that cuts were coming.

“It’s not that common to have one governor and one president that dissent,” said Laura Ullrich, director of economic research for North America at the Indeed Hiring Lab, who worked at the Richmond Fed for years. Hammack’s vote didn’t surprise her, since she had heard Hammack lay out her views at a conference in Cleveland two weeks earlier. “The Lisa Cook dissent was more surprising,” Ullrich told Fortune.

At a press conference after the decision, Fed Chair Kevin Warsh said the committee chose to wait and see. “What we decided to do was to call these questions, take stock of where we are, evaluate what we’re seeing out the window, ask ourselves whether the period right in front of us is likely to provide more clarity.”

He added, “The overwhelming consensus is that what we’ve done in this monetary medicine is starting to work some, but there is no firm conclusions.”

“It’s a waiting game,” said Ullrich, who believes a hike is likely soon. “Since the last meeting, none of the inflation data has gotten better. It’s gotten worse,” she said. “I think the probability of a hike in December is very, very high. It was already high in the market, so it’ll probably go even higher after today’s decision.”

Consumer prices rose 3.7% from a year earlier in September. Before Wednesday’s decision, traders put the odds of a December hike at 78%, according to CME Group’s FedWatch tool.

That inflation has gone up and the rate has not is difficult to square. “Ultimately, the FOMC’s vote to keep its target federal funds rate unchanged today (while widely expected) is a bit hard to square with its unconditional pledge to restore price stability that has repeatedly been made over the past five months,” said Aubrey Woessner, associate economist in the Indeed Hiring Lab. “Whether the public believes the Fed will bring inflation down in a timely manner matters for everyone.”