I'm John Batch for the business of America at Christmas time is small business. It's the same

all the year long, but I welcome Gene Marks. The small business columnist for the Guardian

newspaper, the UK edition and the US edition, as well as our hometown newspaper, the Philadelphia

Inquire and many of the distinguished publications to take us through the changes ahead of us in 2023

following decisions in Congress and also the awaiting of the recession and people getting ready

for a combination of a fall off and demand and still difficulties finding employees. Gene,

a very good evening to you. The first is a geeky number that I want to attend to it because it

attaches to a number about the wage price spiral that we've talked about when wages are raised,

the old way was that that's 50% of inflation and wages are being raised, but the first one is a

report we had from the government this last week. The personal income was above expectations.

Wall Street didn't like that and at the same time inflation was lower than expected. How do these

numbers go together? The wages are going up, but inflation is not going up. Well, inflation itself,

as we've been watching and keeping a close eye on, it's still relatively high year over year.

It's just that the increases in inflation are starting to moderate and a plateau has definitely

been reached, which is good news. We're finding reports not only from the Federal Reserve,

but also from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that inflation itself is tempered a bit.

As far as the CPI is concerned, the consumer price index, however, for income for workers

and personal consumption and personal earnings, those numbers have actually been showing growth,

which is good news. In fact, higher than what was previously expected. Wall Street is concerned

because the Fed itself, if they feel that inflation is still not coming down fast enough, the Fed

is going to keep inflation. They're interest rates high, even increase them once more,

and that has a bad impact obviously on stocks, because it draws away money from the markets and

...