The Producer Price Index, otherwise known as PPI, rose 1.8% on finished goods for November 2009. Graphs below in two different flavors, percent change for the year and aggregate:

The main contributor is a 14.2% increase in gasoline for the month, which in December oil has dropped dramatically.

Core PPI, which doesn't include energy and food, also rose 0.5% and this was the largest jump for a year. Recall core PPI has much less noise in it's movement by excluding energy, which has a lot of variation on a month by month basis.

So, even with record unemployment, excess capacity and soft indicators, this, along with the global food inflation prediction mean our deflationary period is now over?

My own concern is the food inflation prediction for next year, but in terms of the rest of the above data and our lovely oil bubble from 2008, from the graphs, one can see inflation is still really at bay.

The full report is attached to this post.