Bumbed about yesterday's inflation numbers. Just wait. There's more. From Marketplace. I'm

Sabri Ben ashore in for David Brancaccio. So yesterday we learned the

consumer price index was up 3.5% in March higher than it was in

February which was higher than it was in January which is not ideal. Today we've got the

producer price index that measures inflation at the wholesale level.

Those prices were up just 2.1% year over year.

So let's go through what that means with KPMG Chief Economist Diane Swunk.

Hi Diane.

Good morning.

So producer price inflation is at 2.1 percent.

Isn't that where the Fed kind of wants it?

What's the takeaway here? Well, first of of all the producer price index isn't what the

Fed targets because that's not what we all pay for that's in the pipeline and I think that's

important but more importantly is what does the pruducer price index tell us about what

might be coming down the road in terms of inflation and the devil in the

details there is not as good as that overall number looks on paper.

Why is that? Because prices for goods at least fell in March.

I mean, that's got to be good.

It was good news for March. What the Fed is really concerned about is that much of the low-hanging fruit on the drop in goods prices has been plucked and they worry if that's the case we could see a more persistent inflation into the service sector really the for the overall population. We had decades long deflation in the goods sector

that helped bring inflation down

as the world economy globalized,

and we saw cheap goods coming in from abroad. Supply chain problems showed up in that producer price

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