US consumer prices fall again in December

A record plunge in gasoline prices pushed overall U.S. consumer prices down for the third straight month in December, closing out a year in which the change in inflation was the smallest in more than a half-century.

Concerns remain low about possible deflation, but represent a marked change from just six months ago when soaring energy prices threatened to trigger a widening inflation problem that many analysts believed the Federal Reserve would have to fight by raising interest rates.

The Labor Department said Friday that consumer prices dropped by 0.7 percent in December, slightly smaller than the 0.9 percent drop economists expected.

For the …