The End of an Era

The Federal Reserve held its benchmark rate steady at 3.5% to 3.75% today, an entirely expected decision that nonetheless made history because it was the last interest rate decision of the Powell era. The 8-4 vote contained four dissenters, the most since 1992, with three of them objecting not to the hold itself but to language in the statement that hinted at future cuts. The market interpretation was clear: with Powell on the way out and Kevin Warsh on the way in, FOMC members are already positioning for a different kind of central bank.

Powell's tenure has been one of the most consequential, and one of the most contentious, in Federal Reserve history. He guided the U.S. economy through a global pandemic, a 40-year inflation spike, a banking scare in 2023, and an extended public pressure campaign from a sitting President. He inherited the job from Janet Yellen on February 5, 2018 and ran it through one of the strangest eight-year stretches the American economy has ever seen.

So how does Powell stack up against the 15 men who came before him? Where does William McChesney Martin Jr., the longest-serving Chair in history, fit in? Was Paul Volcker really the greatest? Was Arthur Burns really the worst? And what do we make of the Fed Chairs almost no one remembers, like Daniel Crissinger, who somehow oversaw the single best stock market run of any Fed leader ever?

Let us start with the full roster.

The Complete Roster of Fed Leaders, 1914 to 2026

Sixteen people have led the Federal Reserve since the institution opened its doors in August 1914. The list below uses the Federal Reserve's own numbering, which counts the pre-1935 Governors who were the active operating heads of the Fed. The Treasury Secretary held the ceremonial title of Chairman until 1936, but the day-to-day running of the central bank was always the Governor's job.

#	Name	Tenure	Length	Appointed By	Era / Notable
1	Charles S. Hamlin	1914-1916	2 yrs	Wilson	First Governor; founded the institution
2	William P.G. Harding	1916-1922	6 yrs	Wilson	WWI financing; postwar deflation crisis
3	Daniel R. Crissinger	1923-1927	4.4 yrs	Harding	Roaring Twenties bull market
4	Roy A. Young	1927-1930	2.9 yrs	Coolidge	Resigned just before the Crash worsened
5	Eugene Meyer	1930-1933	2.6 yrs	Hoover	Worst stock market collapse in Fed history
6	Eugene Black	1933-1934	1.2 yrs	FDR	Brief but pushed for liquidity injection
7	Marriner S. Eccles	1934-1948	13.2 yrs	FDR	Architect of the modern Fed; Bretton Woods
8	Thomas B. McCabe	1948-1951	2.9 yrs	Truman	Forced out over the 1951 Treasury-Fed Accord
9	William McChesney Martin Jr.	1951-1970	18.8 yrs	Truman	Longest-serving Chair; "punch bowl" speech
10	Arthur F. Burns	1970-1978	8.0 yrs	Nixon	The Great Inflation; Nixon tapes scandal
11	G. William Miller	1978-1979	1.4 yrs	Carter	Shortest tenure of any modern Chair
12	Paul A. Volcker	1979-1987	8.0 yrs	Carter	The Inflation Slayer; Fed funds rate to 19.1%
13	Alan Greenspan	1987-2006	18.5 yrs	Reagan	2nd longest; "irrational exuberance"; housing bubble taint
14	Ben S. Bernanke	2006-2014	8.0 yrs	G.W. Bush	2008 Financial Crisis; Nobel Prize 2022
15	Janet L. Yellen	2014-2018	4.0 yrs	Obama	First woman; quiet, smooth tenure
16	Jerome H. Powell	2018-2026	8.0 yrs	Trump / Biden	COVID; inflation fight; Trump pressure

Stock Market Performance Under Every Fed Chair

The single cleanest way to evaluate a Fed Chair's tenure for investors is to look at how the stock market performed during their time in office. This is not a perfect measure. A Chair who inherits an economic disaster (Eugene Meyer) will be punished by the data, while one who lucks into a roaring bull market (Daniel Crissinger) will look like a genius. But over 112 years of data, the patterns are revealing.

Below is the annualized Dow Jones Industrial Average return under each Fed Chair, using data compiled by U.S. News & World Report through July 2025 and updated for Powell's full tenure through April 2026. The numbers are price-only returns and do not include dividends.

The chart tells a clear story. Daniel Crissinger (1923-1927) is the runaway winner, but mostly through luck of timing. He took office during the Roaring Twenties, when the Dow more than doubled and inflation was almost nonexistent. Paul Volcker (1979-1987) is a more meaningful hero. He inherited an economic catastrophe, deliberately induced a brutal recession to break inflation, and still managed to deliver the second-best annualized stock market returns of any Fed Chair on the way out the door. Janet Yellen (2014-2018) ran the table with a quiet, low-controversy tenure that produced the best inflation-adjusted returns since Volcker.

At the bottom, Eugene Meyer (1930-1933) presided over the absolute worst stock market period of any Fed Chair, with annualized declines of roughly 33%. Some of that was inherited disaster, but the Fed's tight-money response to the early Depression unquestionably made things worse. Meyer's inflation-adjusted annualized return of about negative 26% has never been approached.

Tenure Length: The Iron Men and the Brief Encounters

Length of tenure tells you something about how much political latitude a Chair was given to do the job, and how much trust each successive President had in their predecessor's pick. The two longest-serving Fed Chairs of all time, William McChesney Martin Jr. and Alan Greenspan, were both serial reappointments across multiple presidencies of both parties.

William McChesney Martin Jr. served almost 19 years across five presidencies, from Truman to Nixon. Greenspan served just four months less. Both became indispensable in a way that made replacing them feel risky. Powell joins the long-serving club at the 8-year mark, tied with Burns, Volcker, and Bernanke.

At the other end, the modern shortest-serving Chair is G. William Miller, who lasted only 1 year and 151 days before Carter shuffled him over to Treasury and brought in Volcker. Miller's tenure was so short and so unsuccessful that economic historians have generally treated him as a cautionary tale about appointing someone with a corporate, rather than monetary, background to the job.

The Most Notable Incidents in Fed Chair History

The job description of Fed Chair is technical, but the actual job has always been deeply political. Every Chair has had to navigate Presidents who wanted lower rates before elections, Congresses that wanted easier money for their districts, and Treasury Secretaries who wanted the central bank to play along with executive branch priorities. The most memorable incidents in Fed history are nearly all moments when a Chair either stood up to that pressure or buckled under it.

The Best of the Best: Top Tier Fed Chairs

When you separate luck from skill, a handful of Fed Chairs clearly stand out for what they did with what they inherited. The criteria that matter are: did inflation come down, did the financial system stay intact, did the institution emerge with its credibility enhanced, and did the markets finish in a better place than they started.

Paul Volcker (1979-1987) Legend

Volcker is the consensus choice for greatest Fed Chair of the modern era and probably the entire history of the institution. He inherited an inflation crisis that prior Chairs had treated as politically untouchable. He took rates to levels never seen before or since. He absorbed the political damage. He restored the Fed's credibility. He delivered the second-best stock market returns of any Fed Chair on the way out, despite running the brutal early-1980s recession. The "Volcker Rule" later restricted high-risk bank investments after the 2008 crisis, an extension of his career-long fight for sound money and prudent regulation.

William McChesney Martin Jr. (1951-1970) Legend

Martin gets less credit than Volcker because his fights were quieter, but his contribution was structural. He came in right after the 1951 Treasury-Fed Accord, the deal that finally separated the central bank from direct Treasury control after WWII. He spent the next 18 years defending that independence against five presidents, including the LBJ ranch incident. He institutionalized the FOMC consensus process. The "punch bowl" speech is still the most quoted line in Fed history. Without Martin, there is no modern independent Federal Reserve.

Marriner Eccles (1934-1948) Legend

Eccles is the architect of the modern central bank as we know it. He helped design the Banking Act of 1935, which created the Board of Governors structure, ended the Treasury Secretary's ex-officio role, and centralized monetary policy authority. He served the Fed through the recovery from the Depression, World War II, and Bretton Woods. The Federal Reserve building bears his name for a reason.

Janet Yellen (2014-2018) Solid

Yellen ran one of the smoothest Fed tenures on record. Inflation stayed below target. Unemployment fell from 6.7% to 4.1%. She launched quantitative tightening carefully and without disrupting markets. The Dow gained 13.5% annually under her watch, and the inflation-adjusted return of 11.9% is the second-best in Fed history behind only Crissinger's lucky-timed Roaring Twenties run. She was the first woman to lead the Fed and was succeeded as Chair by Powell, but later returned to government as Treasury Secretary in the Biden administration.

Alan Greenspan (1987-2006) Mixed

Greenspan's reputation has aged in interesting ways. While he was in office, he was the most respected central banker in the world, the man who could move markets with a murmur. The Dow more than quadrupled during his 18.5-year tenure, the largest cumulative gain under any single Fed Chair. But the deregulatory tilt and the loose monetary stance from 2002 to 2004 are now widely viewed as having seeded the housing bubble and the 2008 crisis. The "irrational exuberance" line was prescient about the dot-com bubble and turned out to apply, in retrospect, to housing as well.

The Worst of the Worst: Bottom Tier Fed Chairs

G. William Miller (1978-1979) Poor

Miller is the consensus choice for worst Fed Chair of the modern era. A textile executive with no monetary background, he was reluctant to raise rates even as inflation accelerated and the dollar collapsed. By November 1978, less than a year into his tenure, the dollar had fallen 34% against the German mark and 42% against the yen. Carter quietly moved him to Treasury after only 1 year and 151 days, replaced him with Volcker, and the new Chair had to clean up the mess with the brutal 1980-1982 recession. Miller's main legacy at the Fed was an unsuccessful attempt to ban smoking at FOMC meetings. No corporate CEO has been appointed to lead the Fed in the four decades since.

Arthur Burns (1970-1978) Poor

Burns is the most fascinating disaster in Fed history because he absolutely should have known better. His own academic work in 1969 had explicitly warned that creeping inflation was a chronic threat. Yet his Fed eased policy through 1971 and 1972 with inflation already elevated. The Nixon tapes show how directly the President pressured him. By 1974, inflation was 12.3% and the country was in recession. Burns later went to West Germany as Reagan's ambassador, but his name has become shorthand for capitulation to political pressure. Today, every modern Fed Chair worries about being called the next Arthur Burns.

Eugene Meyer (1930-1933) Poor

Meyer is the hardest case to judge fairly because the early Depression genuinely was an impossible situation. But the Fed's tight-money response made things worse. Stock market returns under Meyer were negative 33% annualized, the worst of any Fed Chair. Unemployment nearly tripled, from 8.9% to 24.9%. Deflation doubled from 4% to 8%. Meyer eventually went on to buy The Washington Post in 1933, where his daughter Katharine Graham would later become one of American journalism's most important figures. His Fed tenure, however, remains a study in central banking failure.

Roy A. Young (1927-1930) Poor

Young had the misfortune of running the Fed during the lead-up to the Crash of 1929 and resigning just months after Black Tuesday. His record on stock returns is decent for his actual tenure, but the Fed under his watch did little to lean against the asset bubble that was building, and his quick exit before the worst of the Depression hit means he is often graded down by historians who view his tenure as an early example of a Fed leader who did not anticipate the crisis until it was too late.

The DaveManuel.com Top 10 Fed Chairmen of All Time

This is the centerpiece. We graded all 16 Fed Chairs across four factors: economic and market performance during their tenure, competence and decision quality in handling crises, institutional impact on the Federal Reserve as an organization, and controversy and political handling. The result is the list below.

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The Bottom Six (Ranked Worst to Least Bad)

Where Does Powell Rank?

Powell finishes seventh on our list, which puts him squarely in the upper half of Fed history. The full verdict on his tenure depends on three things: whether the post-COVID inflation fight ends with inflation back at 2%, whether the Fed's independence survives the institutional stress of the past few years, and whether the bond market eventually recovers from the 2022 losses that defined the second half of his tenure.

Defenders point to the COVID response as a textbook case of central bank crisis management. The Fed cut rates to zero, deployed emergency lending facilities, and helped engineer one of the fastest economic recoveries in modern history. Critics point to the 2021 stretch where Powell repeatedly described inflation as transitory before pivoting hard in 2022 to the most aggressive rate-hiking cycle since Volcker.

What seems likely to age well is Powell's defense of institutional independence. As Brookings senior fellow David Wessel suggested in a recent interview, Powell will probably be remembered as the Chair who stood up for the independence of the Fed and the rule of law. His decision today to remain on the Board as a Governor, rather than walk out the door and let President Trump fill the seat, is the final exclamation point on that legacy.

What's Next: Kevin Warsh and the 17th Chair

Kevin Warsh, the Stanford-educated investment banker and former Fed Governor (2006-2011), is set to become the 17th person to lead the Federal Reserve once the full Senate confirms him. Warsh was Ben Bernanke's primary liaison to Wall Street during the 2008 crisis and is generally viewed by markets as a credible, experienced choice. He has signaled an interest in deleveraging the Fed's balance sheet and revisiting the institution's communications strategy.

The challenges Warsh will inherit are substantial. Headline inflation is at 3.3% as of March, well above the 2% target, driven in part by the Iran war and a spike in energy prices. The labor market has weakened, with hiring grinding to a near-halt though layoffs remain low. The political environment is the most pressurized for a Fed Chair since at least the Burns era. Markets are pricing in rate cuts at the June meeting, which would be Warsh's first as Chair if his confirmation goes through on schedule.

The big question for Warsh is which Fed Chair model he is going to follow. Volcker's institutional spine. Greenspan's market-friendly mystique. Bernanke's crisis playbook. Powell's quiet defiance. Or, less encouragingly, the Burns model that everyone in the building wants to avoid.

Closing Thoughts

The Federal Reserve has now been led by 16 people across 112 years. Two of them, William McChesney Martin Jr. and Alan Greenspan, served almost two decades each. One of them, G. William Miller, lasted barely more than a year. One of them, Eugene Meyer, presided over a 33% annualized stock market collapse. Another, Daniel Crissinger, presided over a 17.7% annualized boom that has never been equaled.

The pattern across the entire history is that the great Fed Chairs are the ones who held the line on independence even when it was politically costly. Volcker did it during the 1981-1982 recession. Martin did it at the LBJ ranch. Eccles did it during the postwar Treasury showdown. Powell did it during the 2018 tariff fights and again during the 2025 pressure campaign. The bad Fed Chairs are the ones who folded, who put the President's reelection ahead of price stability, who stayed too short or fought too little.

By that standard, the Powell tenure that ends in three weeks looks much better than the political noise around it would suggest. He fought inflation. He held the institution. He delivered roughly 9% annualized returns on the Dow and 14.7% on the S&P 500. He took the punches and refused to leave with his head down.

Number seven all-time. Not bad for a lawyer and investment banker with no formal economics PhD, in a job that since Greenspan has been increasingly reserved for academic economists.

Now we wait to see what Kevin Warsh will be.