It's a big week for economic news, highlighted by the Federal Reserve's interest-rate announcement on Wednesday and culminating with the U.S. jobs report on Friday. Stay tuned here for the latest insight and analysis. —Jeff Sparshott

Federal Reserve officials start the year with a problem they would ordinarily love to have: Inflation has fallen much faster than expected. It does, nonetheless, pose a conundrum. The reason: If inflation has sustainably returned to the Fed’s 2% target, then real rates—nominal rates adjusted for inflation—have risen and might be restricting economic activity too much. This means the Fed needs to cut interest rates. WSJ's Nick Timiraos asks the question on everyone's mind: when and by how much?

The Fed won’t cut at its two-day meeting ending this Wednesday because the economy has been growing solidly. Instead, officials are likely to take a symbolically important step by no longer signaling in their policy statement that rates are more likely to rise than fall. Ditching this so-called tightening bias would affirm that officials are entertaining lower rates in the coming months.

• 🎧 What This Week’s Fed Rate Decision and Tax Season Means for Investors (Listen)
• Cooler Inflation Keeps Door Open for Rate Cuts This Year (Read)

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas's manufacturing survey for January is out at 10:30 a.m. ET.

Apple, Starbucks and General Motors are among the companies reporting earnings in the coming days, providing investors clues as to whether accelerated consumer spending will continue to bolster the U.S. economy. Read our earnings preview here.

Across the country, credit is flowing freely again. U.S. Treasury yields, which set a floor on the cost of debt such as mortgages and corporate bonds, have retreated from their multiyear highs. Businesses and individuals are finding it easier to borrow, and many are forging ahead. Investors often watch credit markets as a gauge of economic health, so the rebound raises hopes that the U.S. can keep avoiding a long-feared recession, Sam Goldfarb writes.

• High Interest Rates Crushed Startup Investment. Expected Rate Cuts Could Revive It. (Read)

Josh Frost’s low-profile job is suddenly a Wall Street obsession. As the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for financial markets, he sets the mix of U.S. government bonds sold to investors, a process guided by the department’s mantra to be “regular and predictable.” So why did CNBC’s Jim Cramer crown him “the most important man in finance?” WSJ's Andrew Duehren profiles the 47-year-old who wants to be the most humdrum player in an unpredictable and occasionally raucous market.

• Eager for Economic Wins, Biden to Announce Billions for Advanced Chips (Read)

The most popular tool on the Internal Revenue Service website is getting a refresh for the tax-filing season that starts today. Users of "Where's My Refund?" will be able to get more detailed information than in the past, said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel. Instead of just telling taxpayers that their return is being processed, the tool will now also say whether the IRS is waiting for more information from the taxpayer. In tax-filing season 2023, "Where's My Refund?" got 230.2 million visits—more than one for every individual income tax return. —Richard Rubin

The Commerce Department’s measure of inflation showed Friday that consumer prices rose 2.6% in December from a year before, significantly smaller than the 3.4% jump registered by a Labor Department measure released two weeks ago. What gives? Labor’s consumer-price index, or CPI, typically runs a bit higher than Commerce’s personal-consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, but the current gap is at the high end of the range. WSJ’s Harriet Torry tells you why.

Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, says he is bringing a free-market revolution to the country’s long-troubled economy, cutting thousands of state jobs and slashing regulations on everything from divorce proceedings to the price of milk. But after less than two months at the helm of Latin America’s third-largest economy, the self-described anarcho-capitalist is already facing off against opponents in the streets and in Congress, where some of his overhauls have already been derailed. Its inflation rate is now the world’s highest, surpassing even Venezuela’s. WSJ Editor in Chief Emma Tucker speaks with Milei about his plan to prevent an economic collapse.

President Biden’s 2021 declaration that “America is back” was welcomed by European officials eager to move past their trade troubles with the Trump administration. Yet instead of reversing policies driven by Donald Trump’s protectionist view, Biden has advanced many of them. Many Europeans fear that Trump, seemingly en route to the Republican nomination, might abandon Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as well as inject chaos into global trade. And regardless of the winner of the expected Biden-Trump rematch, diplomats and officials across Europe are wondering if they face the possibility of economic conflict between the longtime allies, Andrew Duehren and Kim Mackrael write.

Property developer China Evergrande Group has been ordered to liquidate by a Hong Kong court, bringing an end to the yearslong saga of a company whose default rippled through the world’s second-largest economy. Evergrande’s liquidation is likely to send another shock wave through the Chinese real-estate industry that already has seen dozens of developers collapse over the past two years as banks pulled back funding and property values underwent a sharp correction, Alexander Saeedy and Rebecca Feng report.

Real Time Economics comes to you from WSJ reporters and editors around the world. Today's issue was curated and edited by Jeff Sparshott (@jeffsparshott) and Greg Ip (@greg_ip) in Washington, D.C., and editors in London.

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