I asked my Warsh-bot: Q: October cpi printed 0.30% above Wall Street estimate of 0.2%. How does that change your thinking going into the December 2026 meeting? *simulated response, not actual Warsh words “A bit of self-deprecation first: I'm told one-tenth of a percentage point is the sort of thing that launches a thousand research notes, and I will try not to add to the pile. My own sense is this. First, trends matter more than data points, so I want to know what happened to the six- and twelve-month rates and how many components are running above 3 percent, against the 54 percent we saw in August. Second, I'd want to know whether it was energy or something that broadens, because the second- and third-order effects are what concern me. Third, what are inflation swaps and expectations doing, since those are our signposts. Fourth, how did financial conditions behave around it? If markets are tightening on their own, that is policy working. It strikes me that the Committee will have more information by December than it does today, and I would want the family fight to be about substance. What matters in the end is that we deliver price stability.”