This episode is brought to you by Slack. With Slack, you can bring all your people and

tools together in one place. It's your digital HQ where you can increase productivity,

enable flexibility and automate workflows. Plus, Slack is full of game-changing features

like huddles for quick check-ins or Slack Connect, which helps you connect with partners

inside and outside of your company. Slack, where the future works. Get started at

Slack.com slash DHQ. This is CBS. I am the world. I'm John Batchler. Small business, the

business of America is small business and I welcome Jean Marx. He is a small business

columnist for the UK and US edition of the Guardian as well as our hometown newspaper,

The Philadelphia Inquirer. And the macro stories of business right now in America and the

way the markets are reacting, the comments by the Federal Reserve. All turn on a couple

of statistics you get every month, especially when you're worried about inflation. Jean,

a very good evening to you. Thank you very much. The CPI. They came in and suddenly there

were people reacting quite excited. Now, somewhere in despair, somewhere please, somewhere

saying, see, we're going in the right direction. I don't remember whether we hung on the CPI

quite this intensely before the pandemic, but right now it seems like a starting gun for

the bears and the bulls. Is it good news, Jean? Can you tell for a small business?

Well, yeah, of course it's good news when you see the CPI starting to trend down. I mean,

the CPI came in on an annual rate of 7.1%. But gee, John, anybody who listened to our conversation

now and hopefully listened to us in the past, know that I really kind of ignore the CPI

and as a person that's in the small business world, I pay attention to the CPI, the producer

price index. Also good news there, trending down, but also still at 7.4% increase. This

was recorded last week. That was reported. I'll tell you what I'm seeing, John. When

...