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Inflation is easing, but not evenly throughout the economy.

Since it's the time of year for Charles Dickens, let's call it a tale of two inflation.

From American public media, this is Marketplace.

In Washington, D.C., I'm Kimberly Adams in Forkai, Rizdal.

It's the 23rd of December, good to have you along.

In what has become an annual holiday tradition, Congress has scrambled to pull together and pass a $1.7 trillion spending bill,

avoiding an end-of-year partial government shutdown.

For more on what's in that spending deal and to chat about the economic week that was, I'm joined by Gina Smilak at the New York Times and Heather Long at the Washington Post.

Welcome you too.

Hi, Kimberly.

Heather, I want to start with you and this big news here in D.C., which is that Congress passed that funding bill.

Why do we do this? Why do we do it this way?

It really is crazy. Lawmakers who can't get along and fight all year long suddenly are ready to do Kumbaya because they want to avoid a snowstorm and get the heck out of town.

And so they're willing to pass a bill with over 4,000 pages that clearly nobody's read yet and allocates 1.7 billion in funding.

A couple of my relatives were asking me, how can the stock market be up today based on this craziness?

And I said, well, I mean, from an economic perspective, a policy perspective, it's terrible.

...