12-Month Producer Prices Up 7.3%

The Producer Price Index for finished goods rose 0.2 percent in May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has announced.

More significantly, on a 12 month basis, prices for finished goods moved up 7.3 percent for the 12 months ended May 2011, the largest year-over-year gain since an 8.8-percent advance in September 2008.

At the earlier stages of processing, prices received by manufacturers of intermediate goods climbed 0.9 percent in May, and the crude goods index declined 4.1 percent.

Here's the chain of 12-month numbers, since the start of the year:

January +3.6%

February +5.6%

March +5.8%

April +6.8%

May +7.3%

Of course, there are views on price inflation that say it is not a problem.

Former top Obama advisor Larry Summers wrote yesterday:

The underlying rate of inflation is still trending downwards...

And the last we heard from Paul Krugman on inflation, his view was:

There’s really nothing here to shake my view that deflation, not inflation, is the threat.