This week may be the last time we hear from Jerome Powell as Chair of the Federal Reserve.

While not above criticism — headline CPI inflation did record a nine-handle print on his watch, after all — it’s fair, I think, to say he did a reasonably admirable job under what, at times, were the most arduous circumstances imaginable for a central banker.

Powell’s shift at the helm got off to an inauspicious start when the VIX ETN complex imploded on his very first day in the big seat. It was non-stop drama from there.

Powell, as Fed chair, navigated tariff wars, shooting wars, bear markets in both stocks and US government bonds, energy crises, a literal plague and, of course, a withering attack on institutional independence which crescendoed in grand jury subpoenas threatening a criminal indictment.

He also presided over the most acute bout of inflation since the 1970s and, in turn, the most aggressive rate-hiking campaign since Paul Volcker.

A cake walk this was not. As Phil Connors might put it, “I didn’t just survive a wreck. I wasn’t just blown up yesterday. I have been stabbed, shot, poisoned, frozen, hung, electrocuted and burned.”

Headed into this week’s FOMC meeting, Powell’s fate on the Fed board — he could technically serve until 2028 even as he passes the chairmanship to Kevin Warsh, whose confirmation’s all but assured after the Justice Department finally dropped its investigation into Powell — remains unclear.

It’s possible Powell will indicate an intention to step down early from the board at this week’s press conference. Or the opposite: He may say he intends to stay, in which case Donald Trump will probably mount another attempt to remove him for “cause,” giving The White House another vacant seat.

The Fed will obviously leave rates unchanged on Wednesday. The new statement may well contain a tacit upgrade to the labor market assessment in light of March’s NFP headline which, you’ll recall, counted as the best establishment survey print since Trump’s second inaugural.

The next day, an update on the Fed’s preferred inflation measure will likely show underlying price growth picked up on an annual basis to 3.2% last month. That’s the consensus for March’s core PCE readout, due Thursday. The YoY core PCE series hasn’t been below 2% since February of 2021.

The figure below’s not an “apology” for the ongoing inflation overshoot, but it does illustrate the extent to which inflation associated with factors outside the Fed’s control — or, as the San Francisco Fed puts it, “industry-specific factors” — are frustrating monetary policy’s efforts to bring inflation back down to target.

Note that so-called acyclical inflation actually exceeded cyclical inflation in January for the first time in years.

“These patterns suggest that while tight monetary policy and soft aggregate demand are putting downward pressure on inflation, sector-specific factors such as tariffs and strong demand for semiconductors have kept overall inflation from declining on net,” a VP of research for the San Francisco Fed wrote this month.

“While policymakers can take solace in the deceleration of cyclical inflation, the uptrend in acyclical inflation cannot be ignored given the strength of its correlation with overall PCE inflation over time,” BMO’s Ian Lyngen remarked, of the same data, adding that the acyclical series “was a much more timely indicator of the post-pandemic surge in consumer inflation.”

When you throw in the distinct possibility that the latest energy supply shock will eventually show up in some components of core inflation, you’re left to ponder the prospect of ongoing “stubbornness” in measures of underlying price growth.

In any event, there’s no SEP refresh this week, and even if there were, it wouldn’t much matter: Between the war and uncertainty around what AI will mean for jobs and productivity, forecasts are even more useless than usual.