The Fed carries two mandates: stable prices and maximum employment. Most of the time those mandates pull in the same direction. An oil price shock is one of the few mechanisms that pulls them apart at the same time. Rising energy prices push consumer inflation higher while simultaneously compressing margins, reducing real purchasing power, and threatening growth. The Fed can raise rates to fight the inflation side, but that deepens the growth hit. It can hold or cut to support growth, but that lets inflation run. There is no lever that solves both at once. The SEP projections the committee publishes Wednesday were built on data that predate the current move in energy prices. If oil has shifted materially in the last two weeks, those forecasts are calibrated to a state of the world that is already changing. The committee will be publishing confidence from a model running on stale inputs. The last time policymakers misread a supply shock as demand inflation, it took years to untangle. The question worth watching is not what the Fed signals Wednesday, but how quickly those projections need to be revised at the May meeting.