Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Telling the Wrong Story

Wholesale prices jump 1.4 percent? Wow!

I gotta read that story:

Consumer prices rose less than expected in January while prices excluding food and energy actually fell, something that hasn't happened in more than a quarter-century.

The Labor Department said Friday that consumer prices edged up 0.2 percent in January while prices excluding food and energy slipped 0.1 percent. That was the first monthly decline since December 1982.

The benign inflation news gives the Federal Reserve more time to keep interest rates at record-low levels to shore up the economy and should ease worries in financial markets that a Fed rate hike is more imminent.

Nothing at all in the article about wholesale prices. But if you don't count the prices that went up last month, it turns out prices went down.

Oh, there it is. In the blurb under the photo:

FILE - In this Feb. 1, 2010 file photo, a worker completes a fuel delivery at gas pumps in Lynnfield, Mass. Wholesale prices shot up at double the expected pace in January, propelled higher by big increases in energy costs.

(Why is the Sacramento Bee using a photo from Massachusetts?)

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