It’s CPI week in the US, which doesn’t mean as much as it used to.

At this point, the Fed pretty plainly believes the fight’s won, although they wouldn’t put it that way. Last week’s data, including a mixed jobs report and a rare downside surprise on ISM’s gauge of services sector activity, likely sealed the deal on a December rate cut.

The incoming administration’s trade and immigration policies present upside risks to consumer prices, and Americans are palpably concerned. But Jerome Powell’s adamant that it’s too early for the Fed to factor tariffs into monetary policy deliberations. There are, he correctly assessed during a mostly pointless fireside chat with Andrew Ross Sorkin, too many unknowns.

Consensus is looking for 0.3% from both the headline and core MoM CPI prints.

Assuming an in-line read, November would mark four months in a row of warm-ish underlying monthly price growth. Again, it just doesn’t feel like the Fed’s concerned anymore.

“Given that the unrounded consensus for core-CPI is +0.27%, we’re left with the operating assumption that the inflation update will clear the path for a [December] cut and not complicate the decision,” BMO’s Ian Lyngen remarked. “It certainly isn’t wasted on us that Powell has spent much of the last several weeks attempting to explain-away the evidence of stickier prices seen in September and October [raising] the question whether another upside surprise would undermine the Chair’s credibility or force the Fed’s hand to adopt a more hawkish bias in the near-term.”

Note that US yields are between 20bps and 30bps off the local highs, and bonds are coming off three weeks of gains. The CPI update has the potential to upset the applecart, but with 10s at 4.15%, concerns about an imminent revisiting of the cycle highs (i.e., a five-handle) have faded. Indeed, bonds are something of a side show all of a sudden, taking a backseat to the ongoing, post-election melt-up in equities.

The figures above, from Lyngen, give you a sense of where we are now, after yields receded, in the context of historical rate-cutting cycles. This time still looks anomalous, but less so on 10s versus a few weeks ago, when the current episode stuck out like a sore thumb.

Other than CPI (and PPI), the US docket’s pretty sparse. An update on small business sentiment will be notable for any “Trump bump.” NFIB’s due on Tuesday, the NY Fed releases the latest vintage of its consumer survey Monday, and that’s about it on the US macro front.

Across the pond, the ECB will presumably cut rates again, and Christine Lagarde will doubtlessly be pressed about the implications for monetary policy of political tumult in France, where Marine Le Pen’s far-right holds the cards after co-signing the left’s bid to topple Michel Barnier, forcing Emmanuel Macron to pick another premier amid a predictably contentions budget fight.

In China, Beijing will release CPI data, as well as credit and trade figures covering November. There’s precious little in the way of evidence to suggest the world’s second-largest economy’s close to sustaining a meaningful recovery, although the export numbers may reflect front-loading on account of “Tariff Man.”

Speak of the devil, Donald Trump told NBC over the weekend he doesn’t plan to fire Jerome Powell. That’s good because, as Powell made clear last month, that’d be illegal — “Not permitted under the law,” as he put it.