The Fed keeps getting hit with new shocks in its yearslong inflation fight

First is the policy statement. A minority of officials pushed unsuccessfully in January to jettison language hinting that the next move is a cut.

Making that change would mark the first explicit acknowledgment that the easing cycle may be over.Second is the quarterly projections, where each of the 19 meeting participants writes down where they think inflation and rates are headed over the coming years.Third is the post-meeting press conference, where Fed Chair Jerome Powell can amplify or play down whatever signals emerge from the other two.The war’s effect on energy markets has made the Fed’s job more fraught. In the near term, the uncertainty is so pervasive that it virtually guarantees the Fed does nothing, much as officials sat on their hands after the tariff announcements last spring.

Powell used the phrase “wait and see” 11 times at a press conference last May.But the projections force officials to look ahead, and that’s where the picture gets more unsettling. The war has widened the range of plausible outcomes for the economy without clarifying which one is most likely.

Oil prices could retreat if the conflict is contained or surge further if it escalates, threatening both higher inflation and weaker growth simultaneously.“The people that were more worried about inflation before are going to be even more worried about it now,” said Jonathan Pingle, chief U.S. economist at UBS.

“But the people that were more worried about the labor market—this should probably increase their concern, not lessen it.”The standard advice for a central bank facing an oil shock is to look past it, concluding that the hit to growth and the boost to inflation roughly cancel out. But that advice assumes the public trusts that inflation will