Kevin Warsh stays mum on next interest rate decision in first international appearance as Fed chair

Speaking at the ECB Forum on Central Banking in Sintra, Portugal, Warsh said inflation remained a concern but stopped short of telegraphing any policy move. "We've all looked around, and we've seen that prices are too high," he told CNBC's Sara Eisen during the panel discussion. The panel also included European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey, and Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem.

Next week will bring personnel announcements related to five task forces Warsh launched last month, each focused on a different area of the Fed's operations, he said. He described an ambition to use new technologies to track real-time economic conditions. "My hope, my aspiration, is that nine-12 months from now we're going to be using new technologies to understand what's happening in the real economy in a contemporaneous real time way that positions us as central makers to make better decisions," he said.

The Sintra panel marked just the second public appearance by Warsh since the Senate confirmed him in May, following only his news conference after last month's policy meeting.

After Warsh finished speaking, U.S. Treasury yields gave back some of their earlier advance. On the question of a possible rate increase at the July meeting, Warsh declined to tip his hand, while acknowledging that the inflation outlook had improved somewhat since policymakers last convened.

The Fed held interest rates steady at a target range of 3.5% to 3.75% at its June meeting, with policymakers voting 12-0 to keep borrowing costs unchanged. That meeting marked Warsh's first as chair after he was confirmed in May to succeed Jerome Powell. The committee's statement flagged persistent inflation and uncertainty tied partly to the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. Consumer prices rose 4.2% year-over-year in May, a three-year high.

A majority of Fed officials — nine of 19 — projected at least one rate hike before year-end, a shift from March when no policymaker had called for an increase. Warsh has also moved to scale back the Fed's use of forward guidance, arguing that detailed economic forecasting was "not well suited to the current policy conjecture." The June FOMC statement ran just 132 words and omitted the interest rate votes of individual committee members.