Producer Prices Fell Surprising 0.2 Pet. In October, U.S. Says: Inflation Negligible Over Past 12.
Inflation of the price of goods produced in the United States has ail but disappeared, according to a Labor Department report issued yesterday.</br></br>Prices charged by producers when they first sell a completed item, whether a new car or a bunch of carrots, fell 0.2 percent last month, the department said.</br></br>That decline left the departmentÛªs producer price index up a scant 0.2 percent over the past 12 months. Excluding the volatile food and energy goods, the so-called core index was up only 0.1 percent for the year.</br></br>The report was much better than many investors and analysts had expected and set off a strong rally in bond prices, which had slumped badly over the past two weeks.</br></br>As prices rose, yields on 30-year Treasury bonds fell to 6.14 percent from 6.20 percent while rates on securities with shorter maturities fell by lesser amounts.