Segments From This Episode

• Making the inflation report make sense

  by Sabri Ben-Achour

  Overall inflation ticked up in December, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The consumer price index shows that prices rose 3.4% year over year in December — higher than the number the month before, which was 3.1%. But if you take out food and energy, inflation slowed down slightly. Let’s discuss with Julia Coronado, founder and president of MacroPolicy Perspectives.

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• Getting better — but still with a tall mountain to climb

  by Nancy Marshall-Genzer

  According to a report by the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an IRS watchdog, there’s still lots of room for improvement on things like processing tax returns and answering phone calls. But the IRS is making progress.

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• Inflation ticked up to 3.4% in December. How are wages doing?

  by Mitchell Hartman

  

  Wage growth is slowing, and those at the top of the earnings spectrum have done better than those at the lower end.

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• A reluctant approval by the SEC

  by Sabri Ben-Achour

  The Securities and Exchange commission has just made it a lot easier for people to invest in Bitcoin. After a decade, the SEC reluctantly approved the trading of an exchange-traded fund for Bitcoin. SEC Chair Gary Gensler made a point of coming out and saying “we do not approve or endorse Bitcoin.”  For more, we chat with have Ari Redbord, a former federal prosecutor and U.S. Treasury Department official who’s now Global Head of Policy at cryptocurrency compliance firm TRM Labs.

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