Between them, Scott Bessent and Kevin Warsh need to reclaim the narrative next week.

That is unless they want dollar debasement to be the zeitgeist, which I certainly hope they don’t.

I’m not sure it’s possible for Bessent to recover all the credibility he lost in the worst Treasury secretary own goal since Steve Mnuchin’s infamous “Don’t worry, the banks are solvent, I checked” announcement late one Sunday evening in December 2018.

But what Bessent could (and should) do, is just STFU. Because he’s in a hole right now and continuing to talk is the equivalent of more digging.

Apparently, the Trump administration’s going to “increase [its] focus on fiscal consolidation,” as Bessent put it, while chatting with CNBC, going forward. No one believes that, so anything Bessent or Russ Vought says publicly is just as likely to make things worse in the bond market as it is to improve the situation. Bessent did enough damage in recent days by opening his mouth. He might try closing it for a week.

By contrast, markets could arguably stand a little more in the way of communication from Warsh, notwithstanding his disastrous performance at the July FOMC presser. Warsh is determined that his (Trump’s) Fed isn’t in the forward guidance business but… well, I’ll just reiterate that it might not be possible to go back to a pre-Lehman communications regime the same way it isn’t possible for the Fed to go back to a pre-GFC balance sheet.

Warsh will address Jackson Hole on Friday. I worry he’ll bungle or, at best, waste, the opportunity. Warsh indicated last month he plans to “frame the big questions” while speaking in Wyoming, which sounds like a euphemism for saying a whole bunch of nothing. I imagine he’ll mention his “task forces,” to eye rolls and exasperated sighs.

Just as Warsh gets going in Jackson Hole, the BLS will release the preliminary run at its annual QCEW benchmarking exercise. As a reminder, these revisions are a sore spot for a lot of people, given the rather dramatic downside skew.

The figure above shows you the history of the preliminary revisions going back to 2008. For the March 2025 QCEW/CES benchmark first-run, released on September 9, 2025, the markdown was 911,000. That was revised to a shallower, but still huge, 861,000 downward adjustment in February.

“The pattern during the last few years has been toward meaningful downward revisions, both via the monthly and annual revision process,” BMO’s Ian Lyngen remarked. “We cannot find any compelling reason to fade this trend and, as a result, we’re wary that the revisions could overshadow developments in Jackson Hole.”

With the US labor market already betraying signs of a slowdown (the July jobs report was very disappointing), a BLS that tips another big downward revision from the benchmarking exercise is a BLS that i) gives Warsh and the doves another excuse to avoid hiking rates, and ii) risks Trump’s ire, and all the attendant wailing about a “deep state,” bureaucratic conspiracy to undermine the GOP at the mid-terms.

Notwithstanding chatter among some market participants regarding the possibility that Bessent’s backstop for bonds somehow gives Warsh leeway to raise rates next month, I continue to believe the market-implied odds of a hike (about one-third for the September FOMC) are far too high given a run of soft data, including benign inflation readouts.

Speaking of inflation readouts, July PCE prices are due Wednesday. Recall that underlying inflation on the Fed’s preferred gauge was just 0.13% in June. It likely picked up in July, but consensus expects a relatively mild, 0.2% advance.

The annual pace is seen unchanged at 3.3%, well above target but off the local highs in May.

Market participants will also be watching that release for any confirmation that the American consumer started Q3 on shaky footing as tipped by a lackluster read on the control group in the July retail sales report. Recall that the saving rate is near record lows and annual wage growth isn’t keeping up with headline inflation thanks to the conflict in the Gulf.

Also on deck this week in the US, in order of importance: The second estimate of Q2 GDP (Wednesday), Conference Board confidence (Tuesday), the final read on Michigan sentiment (Friday), new home sales (Tuesday) and two-month-old “updates” on the Case-Shiller home price gauges.