Peter R. Fisher Named to Federal Reserve Communications Task Force
The Golub Distinguished Senior Fellow will help review how the central bank conveys its policy deliberations and decisions
Peter R. Fisher, Golub Distinguished Senior Fellow at the MIT Golub Center for Finance and Policy (GCFP) 2025-2026, has been named to one of five task forces the Federal Reserve has convened to review the conduct of monetary policy.
The Federal Reserve announced the leadership and objectives of the task forces on July 9, 2026. Fisher, who is now a professor of practice at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business, will serve on the Communications task force, whose stated charge is to "review how the Federal Reserve conveys policy deliberations and decisions amid uncertainty."
He will be joined on that task force by Arminio Fraga, founder and chairman of Gávea Investimentos and former president of the Central Bank of Brazil, and Mervyn King, former governor of the Bank of England.
"I am honored to have been selected to serve on one of Chairman Warsh's task forces," Fisher said, "and I look forward to working with my colleagues to frame choices for the Fed to consider to improve their communications."
A generational review of the Fed's methods
The Fed described the effort as a wide-ranging examination of how it pursues its mandate. "The U.S. economy has changed significantly over the last generation, and never more so than right now," said Chairman Kevin Warsh in announcing the task forces. "Each task force will carefully consider whether policymakers' means and methods, analytical tools and policy approaches can be improved upon."
According to the Fed, the five task forces will be co-led by external advisers and supported by Federal Reserve staff. They are to operate independently, with a mandate to "follow the evidence, provide candid feedback, and produce rigorous findings for the Federal Open Market Committee."
Alongside Communications, the four other task forces will examine Balance Sheet Policy, Data, Productivity and Jobs, and Inflation Frameworks. Their members include prominent figures such as former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan, former Federal Reserve Board governor Jeremy Stein, economist Raj Chetty, and Nobel laureate Thomas Sargent.
A career across markets and policy
Fisher's appointment to the Communications task force draws on a career spanning financial markets, crisis response, and public policy.
Before joining the GCFP, Fisher served as Undersecretary of the U.S. Treasury for Domestic Finance from 2001 to 2003. He spent much of the following decade at BlackRock, where his roles included Chairman of BlackRock Asia and head of the firm's Fixed Income Portfolio Management Group, and later returned to lead the firm's global retirement initiative.
Earlier in his career, Fisher worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 1985 to 2001, concluding his tenure as Executive Vice President and Head of the Markets Group and Manager of the Federal Reserve System Open Market Account.
Relevance to the work of the MIT Golub Center
Fisher joined the GCFP as its Golub Distinguished Senior Fellow, a position recognizing what Golub Center Co-director and MIT Sloan Distinguished Professor of Finance Deborah Lucas described at the time of his appointment as "breadth of experience—operating in financial markets, addressing financial crises, and as both a monetary and financial policymaker."
