A closely watched Labor Department report due Wednesday is expected to show that not much progress is being made in the battle to bring down inflation. If so, that would be bad news for consumers, market participants and Federal Reserve officials, who are hoping price increases slow enough so that they can start gradually cutting interest rates later this year. The consumer price index, which measures costs for a wide-ranging basket of goods and services across the $27.4 trillion U.S. economy, is expected to register increases of 0.3% both for the all-items measure as well as the core yardstick that excludes volatile ... (full story)