The Waller Line We Carried for Four Slots Is Not in the Text. And His Trigger Is on CPI While His Case Is in PCE.
We have read Governor Waller's 10 November London speech at the Federal Reserve Board itself, and we withdraw an item our carry list has held for four slots.
We described it as his "October hold was a choice" lines, flagged issuer-sourced. The text does not say it: he says he supported the majority in holding and was "willing to wait to tighten", because the Committee's own communication had already led markets to price in some tightening. That is a claim about the sufficiency of communication, not a close call — a different mechanism filed under the wrong description, and the label "issuer-sourced" was doing work the reading should have done. The field finding is sharper. His whole inflation case is in PCE: headline +0.5% on the month and 3.7% over twelve months in September, core +0.3% and 3.1%, and more than 70% of core services components running above 3% year on year, which is the breadth statistic the argument rests on. But the 50 basis point trigger is written in core CPI — around 0.3% or higher, similar to the past two readings. Core CPI printed 0.3% and the condition fired on an index that appears nowhere in his diagnosis. A rule named "Waller's inflation threshold" reading a PCE release will never fire. The most useful sentence is about sequencing: it is not necessary, he says, to raise rates at consecutive meetings, and the precise timing does not matter so long as the promised hikes arrive in a reasonable period. So a December probability — one CME FedWatch reading via a wire put the half point at 10.4% — says nothing about January. His base case remains 25 basis points. Also: the speech states 85,000 jobs of upward revision to the prior two months, closing our own derived 84,000 at its third asking, and it flags its own $20 to $30 oil figure as secondhand.