The lengthy beauty parade of prospective candidates to be the next chair of the US Federal Reserve Board is expected to end this week. It’s no coincidence, or surprise, that the favourite for the job has views very closely aligned with US President Donald Trump’s.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been conducting rounds of interviews of the candidates for months, whittling down their numbers from an initial 11 to five. He has said the process will wrap up this week, with Trump expected to announce his choice to replace the current chair, Jerome Powell, before Christmas.

Kevin Hassett is a long-time Trump loyalist. Credit: AP

Of the five – current Fed governors Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman, former governor Kevin Warsh, BlackRock’s Rick Rieder and Trump’s senior economic adviser, Kevin Hassett – it is Hassett who has emerged as the frontrunner.

Hassett, as chair of the White House’s national economic council, has sound economic and conservative credentials.

He has a PhD in economics, was economic adviser to George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney in their campaigns for the presidency, has been an academic, worked for conservative think tanks, was chair of the council of national economic advisers during Trump’s first term and has worked within the private equity firm established by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.

From Trump’s perspective, however, Hassett’s most important credential is that he is a Trump loyalist.

Others that Bessent has interviewed, like Waller and Warsh, might be more highly regarded by the markets and more readily accepted by Fed officials as one of their own, but after his experience with Powell, whom he appointed but now detests, Trump is unlikely to risk appointing someone who might act as an independent central banker.

Hassett has advocated for the bigger and faster rate cuts Trump wants. Trump has said he wants the Fed’s policy rate, which now sits within a range of 3.75 per cent to 4 per cent, to be slashed to less than 1.75 per cent.

Where once Hassett, then regarded as a mainstream economist, advocated a carbon tax on coal and........

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