When Fed chair Jerome Powell takes questions from the news media at 2:30pm tomorrow, the complexities of monetary policy may well turn out to be the easy part.

The big picture: The Fed's interest rate policy is in a wait-and-see mode for the moment. Meanwhile, the questions hanging over the institution are considerably more consequential.

• Will Powell continue his assertive pushback against a dubious criminal investigation by the Trump administration?
• Can the president fire a Fed governor without firmly establishing cause, as the Supreme Court is now weighing?
• Who will be Powell's successor when his term as chair expires in four months, and will that person act independently from the White House?

Between the lines: Powell, in his final, legacy-defining months as chair, is likely to face these questions, and must decide whether and how to address these sensitive topics.

• For example, on President Trump's attempted firing of governor Lisa Cook, Powell has thus far demurred on commenting on the case — but did show up for oral arguments in the case at the Supreme Court.
• He took a combative stance against the administration's criminal investigation, which he described as a pretext to pressure the Fed to cut rates.

The intrigue: Another open question is whether Powell will vacate his governor position, which he could occupy until 2028, while his term as chair is up in May of this year.

• His modern predecessors have stepped down entirely when their chairmanships ended.
• But Powell has declined to comment on his plans so far, implicitly threatening to prevent the president from stacking the Fed if Trump doesn't stick to appointees who respect the institution's vaunted independence.

State of play: By comparison, the official business on tap this week for the Federal Open Market Committee looks pretty straightforward. Since the policymakers last met seven weeks ago, data has pointed to steadiness in both the labor market and inflation trends.

• Growth has looked robust. The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow model currently points to 5.4% annualized growth in Q4.
• That all points to the Fed leaving its target interest rate range unchanged at 3.5% to 3.75%.
• "All eyes will be on Chair Powell for any signals about the Fed's openness to further easing, but for now, the central bank's cautious, meeting-by-meeting approach seems set to continue," Christian Hantel, head of global corporate bonds at Vontobel, said in a note.

Of note: With the new year comes a new mix of regional Fed bank presidents who have a vote on policy. Cycling into voting roles this year are Cleveland Fed president Beth Hammack and Dallas Fed president Lorie Logan, who have both taken a hawkish tone in opposition to recent rate cuts.

• Neel Kashkari (Minneapolis) and Anna Paulson (Philadelphia) round out the new voters, Paulson voting for the first time since starting the job last year.

Americans' confidence in the economy plunged to start the year at the lowest in 12 years — amid consumer angst about prices and pessimism about the job market.

Driving the news: The Conference Board's long-running consumer confidence index fell 9.7 points in January, to 84.5, from a revised 94.2 in December.

• The steep drop was seen across both survey respondents' assessment of the present situation and their expectations for the future.
• The index is now below even its level at the depths of the global pandemic, when unemployment peaked at nearly 15% (it was only 4.4% in December).

By the numbers: The share of consumers who said that jobs are plentiful plunged to 23.9% from 27.5% in December. Similarly, 13.9% expected more jobs to be available in six months, compared with 17.4% in December.

• Those data points are just the latest evidence that Americans perceive a much weaker labor market than headline numbers imply — and may reflect wariness of looming AI-driven job losses.

What they're saying: Survey respondents' answers "continued to skew towards pessimism," Dana Peterson, chief economist at the Conference Board, said in the release.

• "References to prices and inflation, oil and gas prices, and food and grocery prices remained elevated," she added. "Mentions of tariffs and trade, politics, and the labor market also rose in January, and references to health/insurance and war edged higher."

The bottom line: American consumers are on edge and deeply pessimistic about the outlook, despite robust GDP growth and a relatively low overall unemployment rate.