JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh takes the stage here at 10 a.m. Friday for his first speech to the central bank's annual symposium, an address investors and some of his own colleagues are treating as a test of whether he can restore a coherent strategy for pushing inflation back to the Fed's 2 percent target.

The address arrives with the two central irritants of his three-month tenure converging: bond yields at their highest in more than a decade, and three fellow policymakers already on the record pushing for a rate hike at the Sept. 15-16 meeting. What Warsh says — and does not say — is likely to move the September odds and the yield curve within minutes.

The setup

Inflation remains stalled above target. The Fed's preferred gauge, the personal consumption expenditures price index, held at 3.7 percent in July, and the fed funds rate has sat in a 3.50 to 3.75 percent range since December. The Fed has missed its 2 percent goal for six consecutive years.

His July news conference, his first at the podium, delivered no such clarity. Warsh pointed instead to a run-up in bond yields as a form of tightening the Fed welcomed, a signal markets took as ambiguous. The 30-year Treasury yield has since climbed to a two-decade high, prompting Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last week to at least double the department's planned buybacks of long-dated debt to $4 billion. Yields dipped briefly, then reversed within a day.

The dissent

Three members of the Federal Open Market Committee dissented from July's decision to hold, and several have used the run-up to Jackson Hole to press the case in public. Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack told CNBC on Thursday that "Now is the time to act," and told NBC News that she had "seen inflation above target for too long." Kansas City Fed President Jeffrey Schmid, who hosts the conference, said on CNBC that he did not know "what we're restricting currently with the rate policy that we're at today," calling inflation "still stubborn and it's still sticky."

Boston Fed President Susan Collins was more measured, telling Reuters that recent inflation data was "mixed" and calling a rate hike an open question.

The Wall Street ask

Fed watchers described a narrow, specific request: not a rate signal but a repair job. Robert Kaplan, the former Dallas Fed president, told Yahoo Finance he wanted Warsh to open with an explanation of the July decision itself and to "be a faithful reporter of how the committee is working, as opposed to leaving it to people to rely on individual Fed presidents and governors making their own statements."

Matt Luzzetti, chief economist at Deutsche Bank, called the priority a "cleanup" of the July session — a commitment to the PCE index as the Fed's yardstick and to rate policy as the primary lever for bringing inflation down. "These ambiguities could be resolved easily at Jackson Hole," Luzzetti said.

Analysts at Evercore wrote this week that "Warsh has ground to make up after his July press conference failed to articulate a coherent strategy for ensuring inflation returns to target and hit his credibility." UBS economists told clients they do not expect forward guidance, calling a fed-funds road map something that "has just not been his style."

The Treasury problem

Bessent's intervention has hung over the week. The Treasury's willingness to lean on the long end sits in visible tension with a Fed chair content to let yields find their own level. "The market is in the driver's seat," Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at One Point BFG Wealth Partners, told NBC News, adding that Bessent had "wanted to take the wheel from Warsh." The federal government carries about $40 trillion in outstanding public debt, and the White House has been vocal about the cost of financing it.

The counterpoint

Warsh's reticence is deliberate, and not without defenders. Some FOMC members agree that leaning too far toward any single outcome risks locking in expectations the incoming data may force the committee to break. Tobias Adrian, the International Monetary Fund's financial counsellor, wrote this week that forward guidance "can become costly in an environment marred by supply shocks," though he drew a distinction between predictions and describing how policymakers weigh incoming data. Adam Posen of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a critic in other respects, has said Warsh can borrow from his own prior statements to signal resolve without abandoning the framework he has built.

The speech begins at 10 a.m. EDT. The next FOMC meeting convenes Sept. 15-16.