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I think the first thing most would say is don't put too much into one months data.
Also I would say the government has an interest (I'd say a VERY BIG interest) in keeping that number low, and they unquestionably have the ability to manipulate it.
Real world I would say this has little to no impact, because it really is calculated and manipulated in weird and funky ways. Several months of negative CPI numbers might start to mean somthing.
One quick, maybe too simple example would be this:
You average computer in January costs $250.
In February your average computer now has a DVD player but costs $400.
According to the government there could be NO inflation in the above example. The increase in price is simply due to technological change. It might even be possible for them to find the price change in that example to be deflationary. I'm just trying to show that it is not exactly a science how they come up with the CPI number, and that decisions can be made to have the desired outcome. Kinda like statistics.
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