Financial markets have struggled this year to decipher central bankers' policy signals, but they face their biggest challenge in December when the Federal Reserve, ECB and Bank of England hold crucial meetings in the space of 24 hours.
It is unsurprising that a week or so before 2021's final meeting, measures of asset price volatility are shooting higher, with currency and bond vol gauges hitting the highest in months.
The Fed's 1800 GMT statement could reveal its thinking on future rate rises, as it could reveal its thinking on future rate rises.
The BoE meets the next day, after keeping rates on hold with market pricing in November.
The European Central Bank might announce plans for two key bond-buying programmes less than an hour later, and the implications could be big for heavily indebted states like Italy.
Monetary policy messaging is an inexact business by its very nature. The outcomes are particularly hard to model because of the constant background menace that COVID has, as well as unexpectedly sticky inflation and supply-chain threats to economic recovery.
Carl Tannenbaum, Northern Trust chief economist who worked at the Fed's risk section during the 2008 financial crisis, said the current circumstances are creating a perfect storm of challenge to central bank communication.
He hopes that the meetings will lead to more candid and fulsome discussions on labour markets and inflation.
The central bankers whose job walking the communication tightrope has been complicated further in recent years by markets' huge clout, far greater than what the previous crop of central bankers had to deal with.
The global equities' value is close to $100 trillion, almost double pre-pandemic levels, and government spending splurges have expanded bond markets. The potential for setbacks is huge when trading at exalted valuations.
The signalling impact resonates well beyond markets - so confident were British banks in a November rate hike that they had moved home loan costs higher before the BoE meeting.
What central bankers need to convey is simple - that they will provide necessary support in the short-run and in the long-run. It's harder than it looks in pumped-up markets, where sentiment turns on a dime.
It may prompt a rethink of signalling strategies, the BOE's Bailey for instance suggested returning to a no-guidance stance.
Richard Barwell, a former BoE economist who is head macro research at BNP Paribas Asset Management, says central banks would like to preserve the policy- tightening option, but without committing to it.
He said that the challenge is to make the necessary change and create that option without destabilising markets by convincing them that the option is certain to be exercised.
Barwell said that bank proceeding with December policy tightening would need to explain the decision in light of the Omicron COVID variant. The risk is that markets are pricing out future rate rises.
That's a problem for BoE Governor Bailey, who, according to Barwell, has a Grand Old Duke of York problem, a reference to the English nursery rhyme describing a futile action.
He said there could be a limit to the number of times policymakers can march the market up to the top of the rate hike hill and then march it back down again.
The UK media dubbed Bailey Unreliable Boyfriend No. The moniker was applied to the predecessor of Mark Carney, whose policy signals sometimes failed to translate into action.
Christine Lagarde, the chief of the European Central Bank, was criticized for her half-hearted rejection of rate rises for 2022 in late October, which boosted the euro and hurt bonds. The move was reversed the following week when she rebutted rate hikes.
The Fed's Jerome Powell seems to have garnered top marks, not least because of his willingness to admit he didn't have all the answers. His calm wavered recently after he told lawmakers Omicron could affect the economic recovery, and suggested that it may be time to stop seeing inflation as transitory.
The dollar, which had weakened, shot straight up again.
Timothy Graf, State Street's head of macroeconomics, praised Powell for his honesty and forthrightness drawing parallels with the candour of ex-ECB chief Mario Draghi, credited with steering the euro zone from its 2011 -- 2012 crisis.
The Fed is making a course correction from what was perceived earlier in the year, rightly or wrongly, as having a relaxed approach to the inflation question, Graf said.