Once considered an afterthought among the proposed candidates for Federal Reserve chair, Rick Rieder is now the favorite.
The BlackRock fixed-income exec had 48% odds of being nominated for central banking chief on Friday afternoon, according to the prediction market Kalshi. Polymarket put his chances at 47%.
Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor, dropped to around 30% odds on both platforms.
Rieder’s late surge has been propelled by comments President Donald Trump made while attending a global economic summit in Switzerland this week.
“Very impressive,” was how Trump described Rieder to CNBC’s Joe Kernan. “Rick is very good,” he added, before praising all the remaining candidates, a list that includes current Fed Governor Christopher Waller and White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett.
Hassett is widely believed to be out of running, however, after Trump gave him a shout-out during a Jan. 16 press conference, saying, “I actually want to keep you where you are.”
Rieder has a meaty resume. A 17-year veteran of BlackRock’s global fixed-income division, he’s responsible for managing about $2.4 trillion in assets, according to his company bio. He previously spent two decades at Lehman Brothers and is a member of the Fixed Income Analysts Society Hall of Fame.
In June, when Scotsman Guide first examined the leading Fed chair candidates, Rieder wasn’t even on the radar. His name first cropped up in October, when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent began the initial round of interviews for a successor to current Fed Chairman Jerome Powell.
Unlike Warsh, Rieder is a Washington outsider who has never worked at the Fed. That may hold a certain appeal for Trump, who himself was viewed as an outsider candidate during the 2016 presidential campaign that led to his first term in the White House.
Rieder has also shown openness to making changes at the Federal Reserve, according to reporting by Bloomberg, which cited sources familiar with the White House’s deliberations.
That stance would also be viewed favorably by Trump, who has persistently excoriated the second term of Powell, a lawyer turned central banker who worked his way up the Fed ranks before Trump nominated him for chairman in 2017.
