Inflation. Still high, but not worse. From Marketplace, I'm Sabree Beneshore in for David Bruncaccio.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has just released the final inflation reading for 2025. The Consumer Price Index for December. Spoiler alert, it is still too high. Prices were up 2.7% from the year before,

but that was the same as it was in November. Between November and December, prices went up 3 tenths of a

percent. Let's get into it with Jeffrey Cleveland, chief economist at Payden and Regal. Hi, Jeffrey.

Good morning. So what are your first impressions of this number? 2.7% year over year,

3 tenths of a percent month to month. What do you think?

The good news, especially for those folks on Wall Street at least, is that the much-watched core CPI, so it excludes food and energy, was a bit softer than expected.

It was up 0.2% on the month, and it's up 2.6% year-on-year, which is a little softer than expected. I think that's what markets are reacting

to this morning. Yeah, why are they mildly pleased about this? I think that keeps the dream alive, Sabri, for rate cuts.

The Federal Reserve, the central bank is, you know, waiting for inflation to continue to moderate.

There were some fears that inflation would be a little bit hotter in December after a pretty soft November report.

So the fact that it came in softer than expected is

overall good news. What are some of the things that are getting more expensive faster than

everything else? And is there anything that actually got cheaper? Well, food in general was up

quite sharply. The food index was up.7 in December food at home, which, you know,

I tend to do a lot of food at home myself. That was up point seven percent in December. That's a big

rise in the index. And food away from home was up as well. So food, I think, is one area for the,

for the average person listening to this, they're not going to be comforted by core

CPI being softer. They're going to look at food and say, hey, no, this is a problem.

Jeffrey Cleveland, chief economist at Payton and Regal. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful week.

Fourth quarter earnings season gets underway this week. This is where companies report back on how they did in the last quarter and what they see ahead.

Kicking it off are some major banks. J.P. Morgan Chase reported its net income for the year was $57 billion, second best year ever.

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