Stephen Miran leaves the Fed. The way Kevin Warsh set the stage.

Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran has come up with some big ideas about how the central bank should change — dramatically, in some cases. As he prepares to step down in the coming days from the shortest tenure in power at 71 years, he seems convinced that his views are right.

But in a CNBC interview, Miran, 42, made it clear that the reality of working at the Fed has tempered his views about how quickly those changes can be made. Change is slower than he thought.

The Fed is “really a committee,” Miran said. “It’s different than an agency where there’s a clear executive who just runs the show, and what he says goes, and if you don’t like it, you’re out.”

That view is important for two reasons: First, Miran could return as governor, possibly before the end of President Donald Trump’s term. Second, incoming Chairman Kevin Warsh shares some of Miran’s big ideas.

Warsh was confirmed as the next chair on Wednesday and will take the board seat that Miran is vacating. The two cannot overlap.

But Warsh will be forced to consider the reality Miran encountered: a Federal Reserve full of people with their own economic views and where institutional change is often frozen.

“You have to convince people,” said Miran, who took office in September 2025, filling the position left by Adriana Kugler.

Miran said Fed policymakers and staff have treated his views with an open mind, despite sharp criticism from outside the building that he represents a threat to the Fed’s independence.

He initially chose not to leave his position as chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under Trump while working at the Fed. He described that as an attempt to save himself from the trouble of what would have been a third Senate confirmation in a short period of time, but the decision did not come well amid Trump’s campaign to undermine Powell.

Miran left the White House in February and has no immediate plans to return.

He says that his critics have gone backwards. He was important to the president because he looked at the economic evidence and concluded that interest rates were too high. “I’ve done my calculations,” he said. “I’ve always done what I thought was right.”

Miran will finish his tenure at the Fed with a rare record of objecting to all six Fed meetings he attended. That is in line with Trump’s demands to lower interest rates significantly. Even when the Fed cut rates, Miran refused to allow major cuts.

Since leaving the Fed, Miran hasn’t changed much in his views that rates can and should be much lower.

“If I were writing the bullet points today, I might have one more cut than I did in the last summary of economic projections,” he said. That “dot” on the Fed’s grid of expectations for individual members called for a full percentage point, or 100 points, of cuts this year, or three points more cuts for the quarter than the Fed’s peers.

Miran says he will end the one-quarter point cut now – in other words, he wants rates to be less than three-quarters – because of the cuts the Fed has already made and because “the data made me a little worried about inflation.” But he adds, “I still think it’s important to front-load those cuts, because I still don’t think we should put restrictions on the labor market.”

Miran’s push for tapering is based on several other factors, many of which are the result of administration policies that he believes will lower inflation and allow the Fed to run the economy at lower rates.

First is his belief in the positive impact deregulation will have on the economy.

“I think the regulations are still being underestimated in terms of how serious they are on the supply side,” he said. “You’re not allowed to build versus you’re allowed to build around the clock … Deregulation raises the supply side by allowing producers to produce more with less is debilitating.”

He estimates that deregulation could reduce inflation rates by half a percentage point in the future, although he admits that the uncertainty caused by inflation could offset some of those gains.

While some of his colleagues still want to take time to study the concept before incorporating it into policy, he believes he has converted a few. “I still think it’s more important than anyone else, but they’re much closer to my vision now than they were in September,” he said.

Those partners have probably never heard the last word about the potential benefits of deregulation. Fed Chairman-elect Warsh called Trump’s deregulation plans “the most important since President Ronald Reagan’s.”

Miran’s views on the validity of inflation data are another key plank in his discussions of low prices. In an upcoming paper, Miran will argue with two Fed economists that recent software inflation has been artificially inflated by technical factors, distorting headlines and prime numbers.

Perhaps the most important of Miran’s views is his approach that he believes the central bank should think about the appropriate policy to respond to rising inflation due to commodity shocks, such as the current rise in oil prices. He says it takes about 12 to 18 months for Fed policy changes to affect the economy. That puts limits on the kind of price changes the Fed has to worry about today, he says.

Think of a clothing company that has had to raise prices to cover costs, says Miran.

“If you think higher rates are going to increase commodity prices today, there’s nothing you can do about that with monetary policy,” Miran said. It is similar to the oil shock of the Iran war, he said. It may raise rates today, but the kind of inflation the Fed should be concerned about is a sustained, upward trend in rates, not one-time events.

“That’s what happens with supply shocks, that you need to predict other supply shocks,” he said.

The concern in Miran’s approach is that, if the Fed continues to look for shocks, markets and the public will question its credibility in the fight against inflation.

It is not clear whether Miran persuaded his fellow Fed members to come around to his view. The three who disagreed with the latest meeting said they were worried about inflation.

But soon they will find a loud voice making the same argument around the boardroom table.

Warsh shares Miran’s view that the Fed has stumbled on price analysis, Warsh said at his confirmation hearing on April 21.

“I’m very interested in what is the rate of underlying inflation, not whether the price changes at one time because of a change in the country or a change in beef, but what is the general underlying price change in the economy?” he said.

It appears that Miran will remain involved in the Fed discussion even after he leaves. He wrote extensively on monetary policy before joining the Fed and worked on his inflation research paper in the final weeks of his short tenure.

“I would like to come back,” said Miran. “But it’s not for me.” The White House declined to comment on whether Trump is considering it.

Outgoing Chairman Jerome Powell said he will keep his governor’s seat at least until the investigation into the renovation of the Fed headquarters is completed. Although Powell has not set an end date for when he will leave, and his term will run until January 2028, an early exit would open up a seat.

If he does come back, it could be a fallout for Warsh, who, as Miran found out, will need allies at the Fed table.