There were two overarching takeaways from Jerome Powell’s press conference on Wednesday.

The first was that the Fed’s still waiting on tariff-related price pressures to work their way through the system, a process which policymakers hope will be complete on or around mid-year.

The second was that it’s too early to say whether the energy shock will persist, let alone make any sort of definitive claims about how the increase in oil prices should or will alter the Fed’s decision-making process.

Colby Smith got the first question and her’s was really the only one that mattered. Should the Fed, Smith wondered, take into consideration the fact that inflation’s been above target for half a decade when assessing whether to look through the jump in energy prices?

That’s crucial. Money’s a confidence game and inflation, as a money-related phenomenon, has a psychological component. When an inflationary mindset becomes entrenched, it’s hard to break the spell (and vice versa on the deflation side).

“Standard learning” is that you look through energy shocks, Powell told Smith, before readily conceding that the “broader context” — by which he meant the Fed’s failure to wrestle inflation back down to 2% — does indeed matter.

When Steve Liesman asked the same question later, Powell had the same answer. To his credit (and consistent with his general demeanor), he was humble about it. “Of course that’s on everyone’s mind,” he said. “We’re well aware of the history.”

Back-to-back-to-back (pandemic, Ukraine, Iran) supply shocks are “the kind of thing” that could impact inflation expectations, Powell fretted, during the same exchange with Liesman. Unfortunately, Powell should’ve said, but didn’t, there isn’t anything the Fed can do to avert wars.

As to the tariffs, Powell spent too much time scapegoating Donald Trump’s levies. And that’s coming from me, an ardent critic of Trump’s militant mercantilism. Powell insisted on the notion that the lingering inflation overshoot’s mostly attributable to goods, and while he had the numbers to back that up, it nevertheless felt disingenuous.

When Nick Timiraos pointed out that services inflation excluding housing (i.e., so-called “supercore” inflation) hasn’t made any material progress in a year (a tacit refutation of the notion that this is all tariffs), Powell admitted the unavoidable. “It’s frustrating,” he said, blaming “a bunch of idiosyncratic things” for stalled supercore disinflation.

“We’re making progress, just not as much as we’d like,” he went on, telling Timiraos that the tariff impact should come out later this year. “If we don’t see that progress, then you won’t see the rate cut,” he added. (Markets probably could’ve done without that.)

Asked by Reuters’ Howard Schneider whether the jump in oil prices was responsible for the upward revisions to the SEP inflation forecasts, Powell said “that’s part of it” before again referencing the tariffs. The Fed “hasn’t seen the progress we’d hoped for on core goods,” he said.

Pressed further on the read-across from the energy shock, Powell emphasized there’s “no conviction” on that point currently. “This is one of those SEPs — if we were ever going to skip an SEP, this would be a good one,” he quipped, to chuckles.

Powell went out of his way Wednesday to address Kevin Warsh’s stalled confirmation and, relatedly, Jeanine Pirro’s refusal to drop the legal case against the Fed, which retiring GOP senator Thom Tillis insists is a precondition for advancing Warsh’s nomination.

“If my successor is not confirmed, I would serve as Chair Pro Tempore,” Powell told Fox’s Edward Lawrence. “While I’m at it, I have no intention of leaving the board until the investigation is well and truly over with transparency and finality.”

He wasn’t done. “On the question of whether I will continue to serve on the board after my term [as chair] is over, I have not made that decision yet,” Powell said. “I will make that decision based on what I think is best for the institution and the people we serve.”

At least one Republican in America still has some integrity.