At least in terms of scheduled events, this’ll be a slow week on the macro front in the US. The data docket’s nearly empty and the Fed’s in their self-imposed quiet period ahead of the October FOMC meeting.

While chatting with Kristalina Georgieva at the IMF meetings in Bangkok last week, Kevin Warsh gave no indication whatsoever that the market’s wrong to pencil in a pause for the October 28 policy decision.

The BEA won’t release September’s PCE price update until the day after, but even if the Fed gets the numbers ahead of time and the core print’s unfavorable, it won’t matter: October’s a skip. Or a “pause.” They’re not going to hike six days before the midterms.

The sell-side’s operating on the assumption that the nascent hiking “cycle” will resume in December, and that the Committee will hike again in March then call it done having reversed 2025’s trio of cuts. I don’t think that’s necessarily “wrong,” I just think it’s boring and, perhaps, a little naive.

In my view, Warsh is looking for an excuse to avoid raising rates again. The data’s not cooperating at all, but if inflation ebbs, even just at the margins, I suspect his ostensible commitment to price stability will take a backseat to the imperative of staying in Donald Trump’s good graces. Particularly if the “task forces” conveniently determine that inflation’s mis-measured in the US

The September CPI–PPI series was little short of a disaster, and as the figure above shows, a CPI-derived version of the so-called “supercore” metric the Fed tracks is back above 3%, which BMO’s Ian Lyngen noted is three-quarters of a point higher than the 2013-2019 average.

But… well, again, I think Warsh is hoping against hope that he can wait this out. That the “one-off” jolt from successive tariff escalations and the “temporary” impact of rolling supply shocks will abate before his back’s completely against the wall.

Of course, it’s also possible the US economy rolls over, thereby making the whole thing a moot point. “As real rates continue pressing higher, we become increasingly wary that something will buckle under the strain of elevated borrowing costs,” BMO’s Lyngen remarked. “Perhaps once the upward trajectory of AI capex spending is exhausted and the onus returns to the consumer to drive real growth, the outlook on the balance of risks between inflation and employment will shift accordingly.”

The annotated figure above, from BofA’s Michael Hartnett, is a not-so-subtle reminder: Real yield peaks and adverse macro-market events go together like Teddie peanut butter and Joolies Medjool dates on movie night in my Knoxville loft. Or like Russia and Ukraine in a Vladimir Putin historiographical essay.

Speaking of Russia and Ukraine, geopolitics will fill whatever void’s left this week by an empty US macro schedule. Tensions are boiling over again between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, who over the weekend accused The White House of throttling Starlink internet speeds to hamper Ukraine’s army and slow-walking Patriot interceptor deliveries. The accusations came after Trump waived new tariffs on the largest buyers of Russian energy, a move that drew bipartisan rebuke.

And then there’s France, where some of the worst social upheaval in living memory threatens to tear The Fifth Republic asunder before Marine Le Pen even has a chance to do it herself as president next year.

Meanwhile, corporate earnings will continue to roll in stateside, semi stocks will try to recover from their worst week of 2026 and the credit market will continue to grapple with CoreWeave jitters.

If you’re worried about the AI trade, just know Jensen Huang doesn’t share your concerns. “All of this is going to pass,” he told Bloomberg’s Emily Chang. “The reason is very simple: [AI is] going to be transformative. It’s going to impact every single industry and every single country and we’re [just now] at the beginning of that.”