US Federal Reserve taps Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, who just laid off 3,200 employees, to lead task force on jobs

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, the body overseeing the implementation of United States monetary policy, has announced the creation of five task forces intended to evaluate and improve the Fed's operations. In a press release, Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh named the "external advisers" who will lead each task force, ranging from economics professors to AI investors and corporate executives—executives like Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, who will preside over a task force on employment and productivity.

Yes, that Asha Sharma. The Asha Sharma who, just three days ago, announced an Xbox "reset" that will see roughly 3,200 of her employees lose their jobs by the end of the 2027 fiscal year—a reorganization that remaining developers are reportedly convinced will cause irreparable damage to some of the company's most valuable brands.

Sharma will be one of three leaders heading up the Productivity and Jobs task force, which will "assess the economic impact of new general-purpose technologies, including artificial intelligence, to inform the Federal Reserve's policy judgments." She'll be joined by Stanford economics professor Chalres I. Jones—"currently on leave at Anthropic"—and Marc Andreessen: tech VC, major AI investor, and guy who believes you can improve an LLM's results by simply instructing it to be very, very smart.

"The Federal Reserve's commitment to price stability and maximum employment is unwavering. As is our resolve to pursue our mandate with rigor. The US economy has changed significantly over the last generation, and never more so than right now," Warsh said, deploying a sentence that definitely made sense. "Each task force will carefully consider whether policymakers' means and methods, analytical tools, and policy approaches can be improved upon. I am honored that the best minds from a range of disciplines have agreed to work with us to sharpen our performance as an institution."

Considering Sharma announced that Mojang and King—two of Xbox's most valuable operations—will now report directly to her, I'm impressed that she'll be able to find the time. According to the Fed, we'll be able to follow the task forces' work in updates "posted periodically" on its website.