Recently, the entire market has been fixated on one person—Kevin Hassett, Director of the White House National Economic Council. As a favored candidate for Federal Reserve Chair by Trump, every word he says could shift market expectations for rate cuts and directly influence the trajectory of risk assets, including crypto assets. Want to figure out the future direction of monetary policy? You first need to understand the cards held by this potential helmsman.

**From Ivory Tower to the Center of Power**

Hassett isn’t some amateur politician. Born in 1962, his academic credentials are solid: undergraduate at Swarthmore College, PhD in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, and by 1989, he was already an assistant professor at Columbia University. He later became an associate professor at the business school and even did a stint as a lecturer at NYU School of Law. Over the years, he’s gained deep expertise in economic theory and financial market research.

More importantly, he’s had previous ties with the Federal Reserve—before 1997, he worked there as a senior economist and knows the mechanics of monetary policy inside and out. After leaving, he joined the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that became his main base. He spent over a decade there, rising from resident scholar to Director of Domestic Policy Studies, specializing in how tax policy affects corporate decisions and ordinary people’s wallets. His research directly informed the Republican Party’s economic policies.

The real turning point that brought him into the inner circle, though, started with his collaboration with Trump’s team.