Two weeks ago Rick Rieder was considered an outlier in the race to run the Federal Reserve. Today he is the most likely successor to current Fed Chair Jerome Powell, according to popular prediction markets.

Rieder, a longtime executive at BlackRock, is one of four finalists whom President Donald Trump is considering to replace Powell, whose term as chair ends in mid-May. The others are former Fed governor Kevin Warsh, current Fed governor Christopher Waller, and Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council.

Rieder’s swift ascent in the prediction markets came as Trump repeatedly signaled he would prefer to keep Hassett in his current role in the White House, potentially narrowing the field. He also praised Rieder, who oversees roughly $2.7 trillion in client assets, as “very impressive” after interviewing him earlier this month. Like Trump, Rieder has said explicitly that interest rates should be lower. His focus on the real-world implications of monetary policy also plays squarely into the Trump administration’s focus on affordability, in the housing market and elsewhere.

As BlackRock’s chief investment officer of global fixed income, Rieder runs one of the most important businesses at the world’s largest investment manager. He also sits on the company’s top leadership committee, alongside CEO Larry Fink. And, he is a frequent presence on financial television, where he has spent years discussing interest rates, inflation, housing, and market volatility.

Through regular appearances on Bloomberg and CNBC, Rieder has become a familiar voice to investors and policymakers. His views, shared in frequent investor notes, are widely read and quoted on Wall Street.

Rieder has said that the Fed is placing too much weight on inflation data that reflect past conditions and too little on how the economy is changing. Productivity gains from artificial intelligence, automation, and logistics are reshaping the economy and labor markets in ways that traditional indicators capture too slowly, he has argued. Policy decisions, in his view, are affecting the economy with long lags.

Rieder’s views have aligned with Trump’s repeated calls for lower rates, an argument he has framed in strictly economic terms. Thus, this once dark-horse candidate could offer a Goldilocks solution to the White House as a candidate who wants to lower interest rates but isn’t widely viewed as a threat to Fed independence.

Another attraction for Trump: Housing sits at the center of Rieder’s public remarks. Mortgage rates remain elevated, housing activity has slowed sharply since the Fed began raising interest rates in 2022, and affordability has deteriorated, although it has improved modestly in recent months. Rieder has said higher rates reduce turnover, limit labor mobility, and slow construction. Those dynamics affect employment as well as prices.

Trump has made lowering mortgage rates a priority, and Rieder’s emphasis on housing dovetails with that agenda.

Rieder has also spoken frequently about inequality and the distributional effects of monetary policy. In a 2024 interview with the Wall Street Journal, he said higher rates weigh most heavily on borrowers, renters, and younger households, while benefiting savers. High borrowing costs, he said, have had a pernicious impact on lower-income consumers without producing clear gains in inflation.

Some Democrats have long argued that the Fed’s rate increases fall hardest on low-income households. Rieder’s comments echo that concern while remaining within the Fed’s existing framework.

Analysts at BNP Paribas have described Rieder as aligned with the Fed’s annual inflation target, currently 2%, and its approach to communications, while holding an economic outlook outside the consensus. In their assessment, he places greater weight on the scale and durability of productivity gains and their implications for growth, inflation, and the labor market than current Fed officials do.

Rieder joined BlackRock during a treacherous period in credit markets. The company  acquired R3 Capital Management, the $1.5 billion hedge fund that Rieder launched as a well-known executive at Lehman Brothers, in 2009. Lehman had sold its stake in R3 Capital as it collapsed during the 2008-’09 financial crisis, and BlackRock bought the fund to expand its fixed-income portfolio management team.

The deal paid off. Nearly 20 years later, assets have mushroomed. An actively managed fixed-income fund led by Rieder helped lead all active exchange-traded fund flows for 2025, Fink noted on the firm’s earnings call this month.

Numerous BlackRock executives have moved between Wall Street and Washington. Former President Joe Biden tapped Wally Adeyemo, Fink’s former chief of staff, as deputy secretary of the Treasury Department. BlackRock’s former head of sustainable investing, Brian Deese, served as director of Biden’s National Economic Council, while Mike Pyle, previously a top investment strategist at the company, later advised former Vice President Kamala Harris before returning to BlackRock.

A Rieder nomination would extend that pattern into a Republican administration. It would also raise familiar questions about conflicts of interest. Rieder’s career has hinged on bets tied to interest rates and macroeconomic forces that are driven in part by central banks.

Trump administration officials who previously made fortunes in the financial sector, such as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, have faced the same scrutiny. A BlackRock spokeswoman declined to comment for this story. The firm declined to make Rieder available for an interview.

Rieder isn’t a novice when it comes to the Fed. He served on the Federal Reserve’s Investment Advisory Committee on Financial Markets, which provides outside perspectives to policymakers.

Darius Dale, founder of the independent research firm 42 Macro, has argued that inflation data tend to peak late in the business cycle and that policy decisions based on that data arrive too slowly. Dale said Rieder understands the scale of the productivity shift underway and the strain high rates place on housing and labor mobility.

“The committee takes on the personality of the chair,” Dale said. “At a moment of structural change, you need someone who understands markets and where the economy is going.”

Still, policy at the Federal Reserve continues to be shaped by the surge in inflation during the pandemic era, and policymakers have emphasized the risks of easing too soon. BNP Paribas analysts cautioned that views on inflation within the Fed are deeply entrenched and could limit the scope for policy shifts under any chair.

Trump hasn’t yet announced his nominee for Fed chair, although that could come sometime this week. The nominee must then be confirmed by the Senate. “Until an announcement is made by President Trump, any reporting about the Federal Reserve Chairman nominations process is pointless speculation,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told Barron’s.

As of Monday afternoon, Rieder’s odds of winning the nomination were 43.5%, according to Polymarket. (Polymarket has a data partnership with Dow Jones, publisher of Barron’s.) Warsh’s stood at 29%, Waller’s at 9.2% and Hassett’s, at 7.2%. Warsh is still a serious contender, but has argued for internal changes to the Fed that have raised concerns among some current and former officials. He has downplayed at times the importance of market reaction to policy decisions. Rieder’s perspective may have landed more comfortably with Trump.

Rieder’s rapid rise also reflects growing attention to how monetary policy intersects with housing, labor, and productivity at a moment when rates remain high and economic signals are increasingly difficult to read.

That has moved him quickly from the edge of the conversation to its center, and may move him into Powell’s seat, come May.