Most economists and Federal Reserve officials believe that higher inflation will be transitory because of labor market slack.
The producer price index for final demand jumped 1 percent last month after increasing 0.5 percent in February. In the 12 months through March, the PPI surged 4.2 percent. That was the biggest year-on-year rise since September 2011 and followed a 2.8 percent advance in February.
The report was delayed after the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ website crashed. The BLS, part of the Labor Department, said it was looking into the problems with the site.
March’s increase in producer prices was across the board. Goods prices soared 1.7 percent, accounting for almost 60 percent of the increase in the PPI. That was the biggest jump since December 2009 and followed a 1.4 percent rise in February. Prices for services shot up 0.7 percent after gaining 0.1 percent in February.
Army Corps allows pipeline to operate
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Friday said it will allow Energy Transfer’s Dakota Access oil pipeline to keep running after an environmental permit was scrapped last year, a blow to activists who want to see the line closed.
The move leaves the decision on shutting down the pipeline with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Native American tribes that have opposed the line for years have asked a judge to shut it down as the Army Corps does an environmental review.
The Dakota Access pipeline ships up to 570,000 barrels of North Dakota’s crude production to the Midwest and Gulf Coast each day. It is the largest pipeline out of the Bakken region, where more than 1 million barrels of oil are produced daily.
The Army Corps said it will probably have a decision on its latest review by March 2022, said Ben Schifman, an attorney representing the Corps. He said the Corps is still doing its environmental review but did not plan on taking enforcement actions.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg and attorneys for the Native American tribes expressed surprise that the Corps was not going to shut the line.
“It’s the continuation of a terrible history that we believed was going to change,” Earthjustice lawyer Jan Hasselman, who represents the Standing Rock Sioux, told the court.
The Biden administration is trying to boost the use of renewable fuels as part of a transition to a lower-carbon economy. It canceled a presidential permit for the unbuilt Keystone XL pipeline from Canada but has not yet elected to shutter an operating pipeline like Dakota Access.
Some LinkedIn data, including publicly viewable member profiles, has been scraped and posted for sale, Microsoft’s professional networking site said, based on an investigation. The incident was not a data breach, and no private account data from the platform was included, LinkedIn said in a blog post Thursday, adding that the information for sale is a collection of data from a number of websites and companies. LinkedIn declined to provide more details about the incident, including the number of users affected.
Bayer is launching a new genetically modified soybean in the United States, striking back against rival Corteva in a bid to retain its dominant position supplying seeds to the $40 billion U.S. soy industry. Billions of dollars are on the table for companies producing a growing variety of seeds for soybeans, the top U.S. export crop, as farmers expand acreage this year because of soaring crop prices.
