Editor’s note: Morning Money is a free version of POLITICO Pro Financial Services morning newsletter, which is delivered to our subscribers each morning at 5:15 a.m. The POLITICO Pro platform combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day’s biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro.

It is a very, very busy week in Washington, and the Morning Money team is going to have its hands full, but here are three of the top stories we’re tracking as we make the final sprint to the holidays.

First — FOMC Meeting: Chair Jerome Powell and other Fed officials have telegraphed that the central bank will raise rates by half a percentage point on Wednesday. That’s a smaller increase than the 75-basis-point hikes that became de rigueur this year in the battle to contain soaring consumer costs.

We’ll be watching Powell’s comments closely for any sign that the Fed will continue to take its foot off the gas to assess the market’s response to a historic series of rate increases. Rate adjustments often “take time to feed through to economic activity,” our Victoria Guida writes.

More from Victoria: “The damage to financial markets and the broader economy has been relatively modest, and inflation is showing signs of easing. Bubbles in both the stock market and home prices are shrinking from their historic surge — but only gradually. Crypto’s implosion has barely caused a ripple. And beyond Wall Street, consumer spending has held up, factory orders are rising, and the job market is consistently beating expectations.”

“If the Fed can tame inflation without crashing the economy — achieving the so-called soft landing that has eluded the central bank so often in the past — it would defy the warnings of Wall Street CEOs and most economists.”

Second — The FTX hearings: Disgraced crypto titan Sam Bankman-Fried will testify in front of House Financial Services on Tuesday. He’s also been invited — and threatened with a subpoena — to make an encore at a Senate Banking meeting on Wednesday.

The epic collapse of Bankman-Fried’s Bahamas-based investment empire barely made a dent in traditional financial markets. However, given Washington’s fascination with crypto — and given how much money Bankman-Fried and other FTX executives splashed into midterm races — Tuesday’s hearing will offer lawmakers a plum opportunity to publicly batter a notorious industry figure who has publicly admitted to squandering billions of dollars in customer assets.

Bankman-Fried is bound to get plenty of time in the barrel, but readers should also keep an eye on how crypto-friendly legislators leverage the hearing to lob shots at SEC Chair Gary Gensler — who has simultaneously been accused of taking a heavy hand against crypto businesses while being asleep at the wheel when it comes to FTX.

“I’d like to understand from Bankman-Fried what guidance he received from the SEC regarding consumer protection standards,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), who sits on the committee, told MM in an interview on Sunday. “What requirements of the SEC [did they] tell you specifically to do? Did they ignore that? … Gensler has made points that he thinks existing rules and laws are sufficient to protect consumers, but clearly they're not.”

Gensler has repeatedly argued that exchanges and other crypto businesses need to register with his agency to assure customers are adequately protected. Those efforts have been met by fierce resistance by the crypto industry and its allies in Congress.

In the interview, Gottheimer doubled-down on a letter he signed earlier this year that hammered the SEC’s enforcement division for launching probes of unregulated crypto businesses.

“The letter was about making sure the SEC was taking the necessary actions to put in place guardrails in the crypto industry to protect consumers,” he said, later adding that any opposition Gensler’s gotten from the Hill when it comes to registering crypto companies is “not from me.”

“They haven't done rulemaking. They've done a very spotty approach,” he said. “He’s been criticized not just by me for this but by lots of people.”

Third — SEC Market Structure Rule Changes: Last — and certainly not least — the SEC on Wednesday will consider a sweeping set of proposals that would reshape the plumbing of financial markets. The hotly contested rule changes, some of which are already under threat of litigation, would affect the execution of stock orders placed by individual investors, create new standards for brokerages and change how exchanges structure pricing.

This a good opportunity to revisit a primer on what’s coming from Declan Harty: “Gensler’s bid to revamp the structure of the stock market is shaping up to be one of the most contentious pieces of an already ambitious agenda that has also sought to impose landmark climate disclosure rules on public companies and tame the largely unregulated crypto marketplace. Billions of dollars are on the line at some of Wall Street’s most powerful firms. SEC officials have talked about rewriting the trading rules for years without making major changes.”

IT’S MONDAY — What else should lawmakers ask SBF on Tuesday and (maybe) Wednesday? What else should we have our eye on this week? Please send tips to [email protected] and [email protected].

Monday … The New York Fed will release inflation expectation data at 11 a.m. … Senate Banking holds a vote on FDIC nominations at 5:30 p.m. … Tuesday … CPI data will be released at 8:30 a.m. … FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX CEO John Ray III will testify in front of House Financial Services at 10 a.m. … The Annual Conference of the Export-Import Bank of the United States starts at 8 a.m. … Senate Banking will hold a hearing on capital markets at 2:30 p.m. … Wednesday … CFPB Chair Rohit Chopra testifies in front of House Financial Services at 10 a.m. … Senate Banking holds a hearing on FTX at 10 a.m. … The SEC meets at 10 a.m. to consider major market structure reforms … The Fed will announce rates at 2 p.m. followed by Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference … The International Finance Corp. kicks off its two-day management practices conference … Thursday … Jobless claims, retail sales and manufacturing data will be released at 8:30 a.m. … Chopra testifies in front of Senate Banking at 10 a.m. … Friday … The Financial Stability Oversight Council will hold a public meeting at 10:45 a.m.

OMNIBUS — WSJ’s Katy Stech Ferek: “Congressional leaders are set to return to the Capitol on Monday under pressure to negotiate a spending bill that would fund the federal government’s operations beyond Friday.”

A TAX CREDIT STOCKING STUFFER — Our Katy O’Donnell: “Thirteen state housing coalitions are calling on tax writers in Congress to include a boosted tax credit for affordable housing in any year-end tax package.”

TRUMP’S TROUBLES — Our Erin Durkin: “The Trump Organization’s potential $1.6 million fine for tax fraud may be a relative pittance to a billionaire. But the stigma is sure to taint its future deals — and hang heavy over former President Donald Trump’s myriad other legal battles.”

 THE LEADING INDICATORS — Bloomberg’s Shannon Harrington: “Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and his top two lieutenants are watched by Wall Street for the most explicit communication on monetary policy, but leading hawks provide guidance that’s almost as important. That’s according to a Bloomberg survey of economists who picked the chair and New York Fed President John Williams as the key voices to listen to, followed by Vice Chair Lael Brainard.”

LET’S FOIA THE FED BRANCHES — Our Victoria: “Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) are teaming up on bipartisan legislation aimed at making it harder for the Federal Reserve to withhold documents that lawmakers request for oversight.”

SOFT LANDING IN SIGHT — WSJ’s Akane Otani: “A few months ago, Wall Street rebuffed the idea that the Federal Reserve would be able to pull off a soft landing. Now, a growing crowd is betting on exactly that happening.”

— Bloomberg’s Craig Torres and Liz McCormick: “Financial markets agree on the near-term vision, but see a rapid retreat from peak rates later next year. That clash could be because investors expect price pressures to ease faster than the Fed, which worries inflation will prove sticky after getting burned by a bad call it would be transitory. It could also reflect bets that rising unemployment will become a more weighty Fed concern.”

DON’T SPEND IT ALL AT ONCE — Our Hannah Brenton: “European banks should be “prudent” on dividend payouts to their shareholders amid a growing risk of recession, the EU’s banking regulator said Friday. In its yearly risk assessment of the sector, the European Banking Authority warned lenders to preserve ‘comfortable capital headroom’ for unexpected losses, despite rising interest rates improving bank profits.”

BEGINNING OF THE END OF FAANG — Bloomberg’s Kit Rees: “History shows that market leaders of one era almost never dominate the next one. There are early signs that a shift is already under way: Growth has slowed or evaporated for Netflix and Meta, while the sheer size of Amazon, Apple and Alphabet means they’re unlikely to provide the huge returns in the future that they did in the past.”

CFTC’S PHAM HIT WITH ETHICS COMPLAINT — Our Declan Harty: “A consumer advocacy group is calling for an investigation into CFTC Commissioner Caroline Pham, claiming that public comments she made about a proposed political-betting market being considered by the derivatives regulator represented a possible abuse of her position. Better Markets on Friday filed a complaint with the CFTC's Office of the Inspector General, urging it to look into whether Pham broke the agency’s code of conduct by publicly discussing ‘what clearly appears to be confidential, nonpublic, internal, discussions of factual and legal information.”

In a statement, Pham said: “Everyone knows that Commissioners are allowed to speak their mind, and this has been upheld in recent court decisions. I’m also proud to demand a meeting that is open to the public to vote on this, and I won’t be bullied by unfounded and obviously partisan attacks,” adding that the complaint “doesn’t have a leg to stand on.”

BIG GUNS — Bloomberg’s Ava Benny-Morrison: “Ex-Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison has hired a former SEC official who oversaw many of the regulator’s biggest crypto cases as her lawyer in the federal probe into cryptocurrency exchange FTX’s calamitous collapse. Stephanie Avakian, former enforcement division chief at the Securities and Exchange Commission, is representing Ellison along with other lawyers at her firm, WilmerHale.”

INFLUENCE PEDDLING — CoinDesk’s Nelson Wang: “Crypto media site The Block was secretly funded over the last two years by Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research, The Block confirmed on Friday. The Block’s CEO, Michael McCaffrey, immediately resigned after the loans came to light, and will also step down from The Block's board.”

FULL FAITH AND CREDIT — WSJ’s Jonathan Weil: “Binance recently made a commitment to transparency, but it has a long way to go before it discloses enough meaningful information to give investors confidence in its future, accounting and financial specialists say.”

The World Trade Organization ruled on Friday that former President Donald Trump violated global trade rules in 2018 when he invoked national security concerns to justify his tariffs on steel and aluminum products from around the world. — Our Doug Palmer

For months, oil traders have worried that a European Union embargo and a price cap on Russian oil … Instead of the feared oil shock spikes, prices slid. They are now as low as they’ve been all year, since before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. — NYT’s Stanley Reed