The Bureau of Lies and Scams says:

The Producer Price Index for finished goods advanced 0.2 percent in January, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Prices for finished goods declined 0.3 percent in December and 0.4 percent in November. At the earlier stages of processing, the index for intermediate goods was unchanged in January, and crude goods prices increased 0.8 percent. On an unadjusted basis, the finished goods index advanced 1.4 percent for the 12 months ended January 2013. (See table A.)

Is there supposed to be something in there that I believe?  Specifically, am I supposed to believe that energy prices were down 0.4% on finished goods in January?

Really?

I'm supposed to believe finished energy prices were down when I see these charts?  Green is red, red is red sort of stuff?

I dunno.  Foods are supposedly down on intermediate and crude goods too.

If you believe these numbers there is neither large inflationary or deflationary pressure anywhere in the producer pipeline.

If.

There are some shockers in the data tables.  Like, for instance, an 18.1% annual increase in the cost of crude foods.  Or a 19.3% change in the cost of feeds (which makes sense, given the cost of food.)  And the 7% change in the cost of crude fuels.

In the subindices the monster movers were vegetables, up 27% and a near-11% increase for eggs.  Other standouts were chickens (up 9.2%) and pharmaceuticals (+6.3%).  Computers collapse by 10% in price, and so did coffee -- it's good to be a geek who likes Joe.

But woe be to you if you need lumber or wallboard., or for that matter, wheat, corn or (unprocessed) chickens, or for that matter soybeans.  Scrap steel prices, on the other hand, collapsed.  (all on an annualized basis, thus you can safely ignore the seasonal lie machine.)

In short, nothing to see here, move along, the BLS is working its usual magic.