As some of the hardest hit areas by the financial crisis rebound strongly, the northeast and the industrial Midwest have been lagging, index chairman David Blitzer noted.

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While Unilever is lagging behind the FTSE 100 Index this year, it outperformed the market by 16% last year.

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Other, more traditional measures, such as the consumer price index (CPI) are merely lagging indicators of inflation or deflation that has occurred already.

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