At the intersection of democratic politics and institutional independence, Kevin Warsh now occupies one of the most delicate chairs in American economic life. His appointment to lead the Federal Reserve quieted a prolonged public feud between the White House and the central bank — but an impending rate hike, one the Trump administration has explicitly opposed, threatens to reopen that wound. How a central banker communicates an unwelcome truth to a powerful political patron is, in the end, a question as old as the tension between money and power itself.