Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's tenure is up in a year, so as the central bank puts together its final framework under his leadership, it's useful to consider his legacy at the helm of arguably the world's most powerful financial entity.

The former headquarters of the Second Bank of the United States, a precursor of the Federal Reserve, at Philadelphia in 2014. ProfReader via Wikimedia Commons CC3.0

Following the last review, the Fed outlined a policy that became known as flexible average inflation targeting. The move was a stated intent to allow inflation to run slightly over the central bank's 2% target for a period of time in the interest of providing full and inclusive employment across the economy, including for race and gender.

"We may be entering a period of more frequent, and potentially more persistent, supply shocks—a difficult challenge for the economy and for central banks," Powell said in opening remarks at a two-day conference reconsidering the Fed's current approach to monetary policy, adopted in 2020 as the economy was still scarred by the pandemic.

The Fed's warning echoes that of analysts who say U.S. companies could face inventory shortfalls as a result of tariff-induced supply chain issues.

There is one subject where Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has been consistent since becoming central bank boss nearly seven years ago: The nation’s fiscal path is "unsustainable." It’s a word he has come back to again and again in describing US deficits,

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A proposal for the U.S. Federal Reserve to release detailed economic forecasts after some of its meetings to anchor the discussion of monetary policy is drawing fire from the heads of its regional banks who worry it will be hard to agree on a common outlook and risks further confusing the public.