Powell at the Fed

Kevin Warsh chairs the Fed. Jerome Powell keeps a governor's seat whose term runs to January 2028, and every contract written about what happens next has stopped trading.

The whole complex turned over $709 in twenty-four hours, all of it on one leg. Read against the $87,599 that Kalshi's September decision book took today, or the $4.87M on a Florida primary, this is a category the market has finished with.

The departure ladder is what is left. Powell leaving the Board is priced at 1.5% before September, 3.5% before October, 10.5% before December, 17.5% before January 2027, 62.5% before June 2027, 83% before the term expires in January 2028. That shape says the market expects him to serve out most of a term he has no obligation to serve out—governors who lose the chair usually resign, and this book says probably not before spring.

Removal risk has gone. Kalshi prices Trump tries to fire Powell as chair or governor before 2027 at 7% on zero volume and $23,637 of open interest. Polymarket's version prices 5.5% by August 31 and 13.5% by September 30—two legs that cannot both be right, since the September window contains August's. Neither has traded.

Two Polymarket legs, May 30 and June 30, have settled No while a December 31 leg still shows 19% against Kalshi's 17.5%. That is the only cross-exchange comparison on the page and it is two points wide.

Federal Reserve Board members.

The departure question priced on both exchanges. Kalshi's Multiple carries nine dated legs from September 2026 to January 2028; Polymarket carries two live legs plus two already settled No.

They agree at year end—Kalshi 17.5%, Polymarket 19%—and Kalshi is the only one with any tape: $708 on the before January 2027 leg, which is the entire day's volume in this workspace.

Open interest tells a different story from volume. The settled before August 1 leg still carries $66,099, more than the live year-end leg's $57,135. Positions were built here when the chair fight was live and have not been closed since it ended.

Before January 2027 at 17.5% is the only contract in this workspace with a trade behind it today. Before June 2027 at 62.5% is where the ladder turns—forty-five points across five months, with a single dollar of volume on it.

The June leg is the interesting one. It prices a spring resignation as the base case while the near-dated legs price almost nothing happening this year, and nobody has taken a position on either side since Warsh was confirmed.

Removal risk, which was the whole story of the spring, is now a residual. Kalshi's single contract sits at 7% for the rest of 2026 with zero volume and $23,637 of open interest—positions taken when it mattered, marked at a price no one is testing.

Polymarket's dated version is internally inconsistent: 5.5% by August 31 against 13.5% by September 30 and 13.0% by December 31. The September leg is priced above the December leg that contains it, which is an arbitrage-free violation that persists precisely because the book is dead.

Both of Polymarket's earlier legs, June 30 and July 31, settled No.

• Whether anything here trades again. $709 across the entire workspace, $23,637 of open interest on a contract with zero volume. If a resignation is announced, these are the books that reprice—and they are currently priced by nobody.
• The forty-five point step from January to June 2027. 17.5% then 62.5%. The market's implicit story is that Powell serves through the winter and leaves in the spring, and nothing in that story has been tested since Warsh took the chair.
• Polymarket's September leg above its December leg. 13.5% against 13.0% on nested windows. It survives because the book is dead; if flow returns it should correct within a session.
• The $66,099 stranded on a settled leg. More open interest sits on before August 1, which resolved No, than on the live year-end contract. That is what abandoned positioning looks like on a book nobody closed out.
• What Powell's seat means for the September decision. He remains a voting governor through January 2028. Warsh's committee held in June and July; the September meeting is the first where Powell's vote as a dissenting governor would be a genuine signal, and no contract exists on it.