Back last February, ZeroHedge and others posted this chart, comparing the CPI with the MIT Billion Prices Project.

The MIT Billion Prices Project is an online price tracking index designed to offer an unbiased, real-time inflation gauge.

Anyway, the red line was zooming higher, while the blue line was tame, causing some to believe that the CPI was understating inflation.

Then in April, MIT halted its project, and naturally ZeroHedge and others thought it was a conspiracy to shield Americans from the TRUTH about inflation.

Well, the project actually came back, and now it's a joint project with State Street.

So what's going on with it?

Mark Perry has the goods: It's been diving, and the dive has even outpaced the CPI.

Perry writes:

the current annualized inflation rate of about 2.2% through early March is the lowest rate in at least two years. That's almost a full percent below the 3% annual rate of inflation from the CPI (NSA), providing support to the notion that the BLS measure of consumer prices overstates inflation by a full percentage point.

So this is bad news in the sense that it's a sign of disinflation. But if you thought there was some MIT BPP conspiracy theory or that this index was proof of an overstated CPI, you can kiss that idea goodbye.