💸 CPI snoozefest

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Finally, an inflation report that's a snoozefest. Plus: The kinda upscale Doritos hooch we didn't know we needed. Let's get into it.

By Allison Morrow

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Last updated December 12 at 6:59 PM ET

✈️ SMOOTH DESCENT

Mario Tama/Getty Images

It feels fitting that today, one of those mid-December blah days when everyone in the office is extremely ready to check out, that a key inflation report was honestly super boring.

The monthly Consumer Price Index report, which measures inflation, is often a Big News Day because of how sharply the early-2020s economy has whipsawed from a deep freeze to a rapid boil and (slowly) back down to normal-ish.

In the past few years, the CPI has consistently surprised economists, both with its surge up to a 9% peak in June 2022, back down to around 3% in late 2023.

Today, the biggest surprise was the lack of surprise: CPI ticked down slightly to 3.1% year-over-year in November — exactly as economists expected, my colleague Alicia Wallace writes.

There's good and bad news in the report. All the usual suspects made an appearance...

The good:

Gas and food got more affordable in between October and November. Gas prices, in particular, have been sinking for weeks. The national average right now stands at $3.13 a gallon, per AAA.
"Core" inflation (which excludes stuff like gas and food that have more volatile price movements than, say, rent or mortgage payments) held steady at 4% — still its lowest level in more than two years.
Real wages rose at an annual rate of 0.8% — the eighth consecutive month of growth after 24 months in negative territory, according to separate data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The bad:

Inflation is coming down but prices are not, and that still really sucks because we can all remember 2019 when everyday things cost less.
We're not at 2% yet, and the Fed isn't going to ease interest rates until it's confident inflation can hold steady around that target.
Rent is still stupidly high. Shelter prices were up 6.5% on the year. And buying a home is a crapshoot right now because of one-two-three punch high prices, high borrowing costs and low supply.

Big picture

Tuesday's snoozefest of a CPI report came out just as Fed policymakers were gathering for their regular two-day meeting. And while the central bank officially favors a different inflation gauge from CPI, the folks deciding monetary policy are taking in all the data available.

The consensus view is that the Fed will announce tomorrow afternoon that it's holding interest rates steady.

Will today's report affect the Fed's policy decision? Probably not.

If anything, the CPI may reinforce their view that rates should remain elevated to keep inflation from flaring up again.

The Fed chair, Jay "Higher For Longer" Powell, has consistently noted that it's premature to declare victory in the inflation fight. An elusive "soft landing" — hitting 2% inflation without crashing the economy into a ditch — isn't out of reach. But like most good things, we'll have to wait.

"This report is very good news for the soft landing contingent," Allison Oldham Luedtke, assistant professor of economics at St. Olaf College, told Alicia. "We are in the smoothest of descents. We just need to be a little patient about it."

RELATED

For the first time since early last year, food prices aren't rising faster than overall inflation.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

In this tumultuous and difficult time, we unanimously stand in support of President Gay.

The Harvard Corporation, the university's top governance board, reaffirmed its support for President Claudine Gay on Tuesday, joining alumni groups and faculty in rejecting calls for her to be fired. Read more.

RELATED: UPen's board named J. Larry Jameson to become the school's interim president, replacing Liz Magill, who resigned over the weekend.

🍸 CHEESY

If boring inflation news isn't your thing, welcome to this part of Nightcap where we're talking about chips and booze.

Here's the very weird thing: Doritos, the chip that invented "cool ranch" as an entire flavor profile, is releasing a crossover product that literally no one asked for.

It's alcohol. And it tastes like nacho cheese-flavored Doritos.

Let's just be very clear about what this is — a marketing ploy designed to spark conversation (or in this case, outrage) on social media. Even just reading this blurb about it may subconsciously affect your chip-buying habit.

The spirit — it's not a vodka or gin, but rather some uncategorized clear liquor — costs $65 a bottle and is a collaboration between Doritos and a Danish spirit maker called Empirical. Toss it in a margarita or a bloody mary, or on its own, over ice, they say.

The product emerged from Empirical's lab, using a production process that incorporated Doritos chips to retain their "essence through vacuum distillation."

Here's how Food & Wine described the experience of actually tasting it:

One sniff of the spirit is enough to reveal its anchor ingredient. The bouquet is brimming with the unmistakable tang of cheese dust. But in the sip, it's all about cornier elements. It leaves your palate with a drying note, akin to what accumulates on your tongue after you've crushed a sizable bag of corn chips. In other words, it's maybe more Fritos than Doritos.

So, all the aftertaste of chips without the fun of, like, eating food.

If you can stomach it, my colleague Jordan Valinsky has more.

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?

📱 In a decision that could chip away at Google's control of its Android app store, a federal jury found that Google's app marketplace is an illegal monopoly.

🇦🇷 Argentina will devalue the peso by more than 50% as part of emergency measures to help the nation's struggling economy.

🛌 Choice Hotels, which owns budget lodging brands including Comfort Inn, is getting more aggressive in its attempt to acquire its rival Wyndham Hotels.

👗 Zara pulled an advertising campaign that provoked a backlash from people decrying what they said was a resemblance to scenes of death and destruction in Gaza.