Consumer spending in America was faster than expected and inflation slower last month, according to government data you can absolutely trust.

Pauses to let the joke land. Taps mic. Is this thing on?

The BEA on Wednesday rolled out annual revisions to the bureau’s most important datasets. This year, a happy consequence was lower overall inflation for the past several months.

The figure below compares the pre-revision series to the post-revision data for the entire period covered by the adjustments.

My snide cadence and the snarky chart header aside, there’s no conspiracy. To engineer lower inflation so that Kevin Warsh isn’t under so much pressure to raise rates, I mean.

Even if there were (a conspiracy), it wouldn’t matter. Headline PCE price growth ran nearly 1.5ppt above the Fed’s target in August, a month during which the unemployment rate was 4.1%. The main argument in favor of rate hikes stands.

With that out of the way, the MoM and YoY core and headline PCE price growth prints for August were 0.247% and 3%, and 0.310% and 3.4%, respectively. Those were all meaningfully cooler than consensus.

That is indeed helpful for a Fed chair facing an impossible dilemma, but so-called “supercore” inflation — i.e., core services excluding housing — posted an uncomfortably warm 0.4% MoM gain. That’s indicative, perhaps, of demand-pull inflation.

Speaking (rather loudly) to that latter point, both nominal and real spending were blistering in August. The figure below shows you the MoM gains for both series.

The sequential increase in real spending, 0.6%, was stronger than the 0.5% consensus and the second-most most pronounced jump of Donald Trump’s second term.

Note the grim quip in the chart text: When you’re depressed and hopeless (as Americans suggest they are when polled), conspicuous consumption’s one way to cope. Spending money, particularly money you don’t have, is a form of escapism. If you’re inclined to say that’s unhealthy, I’d agree, but… well, there are more injurious manifestations of escapist tendencies.

If the Fed’s learned anything over the past six years (it probably hasn’t), it should be that failing to raise rates when demand’s robust and supply constrained is a recipe for inflation. (I know, I know: Who knew?! Economics may not have much of a claim on being a real science, but some things are self-evident.)

Still, Wednesday’s data did suggest Americans are running low. Disposable personal income showed no change last month from July, for example.

Although revisions pushed the saving rate higher (see the figure above), it’s still very low historically, at just 4.1%.

Naturally, traders will focus on the downward adjustments to core inflation, which is to say STIRs will likely fade an October rate hike on the heels of the BEA update.

But if Wednesday’s private sector payrolls update was any indication, the US labor market held up in September. If Friday’s BLS release looks anything like the ADP numbers — to say nothing of August’s barnburner jobs report — Fed hawks are likely to push for another hike later this month. Suffice to say a decision to hold rates steady in October won’t likely be unanimous.