CPI: Businesses Not Passing Savings Down To Consumers?

The reading on inflation from the Labor Department on Consumer Price Index is out.  The CPI for March came out at -0.1% for nominal CPI and +0.2% on the core CPI measurement of ex-food and ex-energy.  Despite a much lower PPI reading yesterday, Bloomberg had the consensus estimates listed as +0.2% on both the nominal and core CPI.

The big drop was in energy with -3.0%.  Interestingly enough, this CPI number looks like it would have been better if there were not increased tobacco prices.  There was also an increase in education and communication costs, so go figure.

These are still deflationary in nature, just not to the tune that we saw on the producer side yesterday.  Maybe business is charging more than they had been able to in the past as producers have generally had a hard time passing on costs increases to consumers on the upside.  It seems on the downside of pricing that they are maybe keeping the savings this time.

JON C. OGG