Powell's Expected Final Fed Meeting: No Rate Cuts Amid Sticky 3% Inflation

In what could be Jerome Powell's final meeting as Federal Reserve chair, he is expected to lead his fellow policymakers toward another cautious pause, with stubborn inflation and a resilient labor market leaving little room yet for interest rate cuts. The decision Wednesday will come against a backdrop of elevated energy prices and a central bank that has been above its 2% inflation target for five years at the same time that the labor market has been weak but not in distress. That's not a recipe for easing, at least not yet. "On the dual mandate, they'd say we're roughly at a stable labor market," Roger Ferguson, an economist and former vice chair at the Fed, told CNBC. "On the inflation side of the mandate, [there's] a lot more work to be done with a sticky 3% [inflation rate], and I hope they argue, 'we're going to sit tight for a little while to see how this all plays out.'" Similarly, Goldman Sachs economist David Mericle expects the post-meeting statement "is likely to acknowledge the better labor market news and higher inflation numbers but to leave the standing policy guidance unchanged. We expect a strong consensus to stay on hold for now, with only one dissent, as in March." So with little drama over the rate decision — markets are pricing in a 100% chance of the FOMC staying on hold — attention will turn squarely to Powell. Unless something unexpected pops up, the chair's designated successor, Kevin Warsh, appears on track to take over when Powell's term ends in May. The transition clouds the usual signaling value of Powell's post-meeting news conference. Powell's post-meeting news conference, normally a closely watched event for markets, could be viewed as less of a guide to future policy steps than it is a valedictory for a central bank leader who has had one of the most contentious relationships with a president in the institution's history. "If Powell were staying, I might be trying to read more in between the lines of what he says at the press conference," said Jerry Tempelman, a former senior analyst at the New York Fed and now vice president of economic and fixed income research at Mutual of America Capital Management. "But given the fact that, in all likelihood, Kevin Warsh will soon be the Fed chair, all the surrounding language, etc., probably becomes less relevant." From a communications standpoint, Tempelman expects the Fed will put the focus on inflation, which most recently ran at 3% on an ex-food and energy basis using the central bank's preferred gauge. Crude oil prices are hovering around $100 a barrel and the average price nationwide for gasoline is surging again, now around $4.18 a gallon, further complicating the Fed's path. Though Fed officials often would look through such spikes as temporary, they also remain cautious about longer-term impacts should the fighting in the Middle East escalate. "Inflation has continued to come in far above anyone's expectations and far above the Fed's target," Tempelman said. "Everyone expects this to be Jay Powell's final meeting. I think also there's very little uncertainty as to what the decision will be, namely, that there will be no change to monetary policy in this meeting, and that from the June meeting on, it will be the Fed ... chaired by Kevin Warsh." That does not, however, mean that Powell's future will be settled. The current chair has the option to stay on at the central bank for the final two years of his term as governor. So far, he has provided no indication of what he will do. At the March meeting, he did say he wouldn't be leaving until an investigation into the renovations at the Fed's headquarters is completed. Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, passed the investigation off to the Fed's office of inspector general, a move that politically cleared the way for Warsh's confirmation. However, it's unknown whether that will satisfy the "well and truly over" bar that Powell set in March for his leaving. "I'm not sure that the move of this investigation from the Justice Department to someplace else really fully checks the box of putting this behind us," Ferguson said. "I'm not sure that if I were sitting in his seat or [was one of] his advisors, that I would say, let's blow the all clear."