Cutting through the noise of inflation from Marketplace, I'm Sabrie Benashore, in for David Brancaccio.

Overall, inflation ticked up in December.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the consumer price index rose 3.4 percent year over

year in December.

That is higher than the number the month before, which was 3.1 percent.

This is the wrong direction.

On the other hand, if you take out food and energy, which are notoriously volatile, inflation

did actually slow down slightly.

Julia Cornato is here to make it make sense. She's founder and

president of macro policy perspectives. Hi Julia. Good morning. So this one

really depends on how you slice it. If you look at general inflation, bad.

Inflation rows. If you take out food and energy, it's okay

okay inflation rose if you take out food and energy it's okay inflation was steady or fell but on the other hand you know we all got to eat

we all got to stay warm as so how should we slice this?

Yeah, it was a month that wasn't the best of news.

We've had some really good news lately.

This report showed some mile backtracking as you note energy price is a little firm in December

but overall crude oil prices suggest that energy prices are going to fall back again in

coming months and the bigger picture is that core

inflation which really measures the underlying trend keeps moving in the right direction.

That's what we want to say.

And there have been predictions for various numbers of Fed rate cuts this year.

...