To the extent the Trump administration’s concerned about restoring the market’s faith in the reliability of government macro data, The White House didn’t do itself any favors by threatening a criminal indictment for Jerome Powell.

As the beleaguered chief of the most important institution in the world made explicit on Sunday evening in the US, the pending charges aren’t about cost overruns tied to a construction project at the Fed headquarters nor about the veracity of congressional testimony related to the renovations.

Rather, “Those are pretexts,” as Powell put it. “The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President.”

It’s not unreasonable (at all) to suggest Donald Trump would find an excuse to fire and/or charge with crimes government statisticians who, like the Fed, refuse to give him the numbers he wants. Indeed, Trump’s already fired one statistician and he’d do it again in a heartbeat.

“Fortunately,” note the scare quotes, Trump doesn’t care about restoring the market’s faith in the reliability of government macro data, which means we can expect it’ll evidence tampering over time, but for now I think that’s low on Trump’s list of priorities.

That is: I doubt he’s currently involved in the particulars of number-crunching, so we can probably assume this week’s figures are no less accurate than they’d be under similarly exigent circumstances, a low bar to be sure.

The headliner’s obviously CPI on Tuesday. Recall that the November CPI report was a boondoggle for the BLS, which was widely lampooned for questionable assumptions made regarding placeholders for October’s missing shelter inflation figures.

As the figure reminds you, the last release suggested core inflation averaged less than 0.1% MoM across October and November, a result exactly no one believed.

Tuesday’s figures will probably suggest underlying price growth was 0.3% in December which, as BMO’s Ian Lyngen noted, would be “a non-event from the market’s perspective.” The YoY readout’s seen at 2.7%.

The Trump administration would like these figures to undershoot again in order to put even more pressure on a soon-to-be-indicted Powell ahead of this month’s FOMC meeting. Market pricing suggests there’s virtually no chance of another cut from the Fed but… well, “Cut rates or you’re going to jail” is a helluva proposition ain’t it?

On the other hand, Trump’s broadside against Powell — which one Bloomberg opinion columnist on Monday described as “a new low” — could backfire if the Fed really is committed to digging in.

“What strikes me about the actions against the Fed is not that the current administration holds an adversarial view toward it. That isn’t new, even if the grand jury angle is an incremental escalation,” Goldman’s trading desk said. “What is surprising is that the Fed appears to be fighting back.” (Yes indeed.)

Traders will also get an update on nominal spending for November. The delayed data from the Census Bureau should show headline retail sales rose 0.4% that month. That’s on Wednesday. At the same time, the BLS will release some manner of October-November PPI rollup which’ll presumably be too convoluted to matter. There’s a smattering of housing data due as well.

Fed speakers are lined up around the block. Markets will hear from Barkin (three times), Barr, the outgoing Bostic (three times), Bowman, Jefferson, Kashkari, Miran, Musalem, Paulson, Schmid and Williams (twice). I doubt they’ll be able to avoid addressing the elephant in the room.