Kevin Warsh didn't bring up the $40 trillion national debt or historic deficits in his Jackson Hole speech

Kevin Warsh didn't bring up the $40 trillion national debt or historic deficits in his Jackson Hole speech

Ben Werschkul · Washington Correspondent

Fri, August 28, 2026 at 6:13 PM GMT+3 3 min read

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Kevin Warsh didn't directly address eye-popping government debt figures in his first speech as Federal Reserve chairman at the annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo., on Friday, just days after the gross national debt passed $40 trillion and debt-fueled Treasury bond market jitters spooked investors.

The word "debt" appeared only once in the prepared remarks, at the beginning of Warsh's speech, when he said "everyone here is in debt" to the meeting's hosts.

Warsh did offer in his speech what was perhaps a hint at how he might be hoping the US economy can bring deficits under control, with a bullish assessment that artificial intelligence could mean "the potential for substantially higher growth is on the rise."

"A kind of super Moore's law seems to be playing out," he added, a reference to Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel, who once observed that computer processing speed doubles roughly every two years.

That echoed remarks from both Treasury Secretary Bessent and President Trump, who have downplayed the exploding debt by promising that the US can grow its way out of the problem with outsized economic growth that many economists see as unrealistic.

Warsh added that the central bank is watching technology changes attentively, but that a task force on AI he announced earlier this year has yet to offer recommendations, and that those findings will "have no bearing on decisions we make in the current policy conjuncture."

Little focus on government balance sheets

Despite no mention of government balance sheets from Warsh, debt and deficits have been top-of-mind topics for investors, as debt-fueled strains in sovereign bond markets and rising yields have led to economic jitters.

Warsh did make a request in his speech for "clear market signals, as unfiltered as possible," including from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, as to "the prices and trading volumes of Treasury securities."

That mention of Treasurys was also one of the few references to the bond market in Warsh's speech, following weeks of bond market volatility — a major challenge to the US economy, fueled in part by the soaring national debt.

The gross US national debt reached $40.047426 trillion on Aug. 18, hitting that milestone after the government added $1 trillion in new debt in just a few months.

A recent Congressional Budget Office projection also found that the annual US deficit is projected to reach $2.1 trillion by the end of the government's fiscal year on Sept. 30. The US has run debt and deficit levels well above historic norms for years — even when measured against the size of the economy.

Annual deficits have exceeded 4% of the size of the US economy in every year since 2019, a level that has only been seen in recent decades during crises or deep recessions.

Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.

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