Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"Well, first the difference. Inflation means that average prices in the economy are rising. Deflation's the opposite. It means average prices in the economy are falling. Earlier this year, there was a big concern about inflation. It was running on average about 4 percent. Of course, there were very large increases in some sectors, like energy and food. But now, energy prices are falling tremendously. Housing prices are falling, and this is actually putting downward pressure on all prices. And so we are actually seeing the inflation outlook brighten quite a bit. In fact, it's probably one of the brighter pieces of the economic puzzle right now. I think many economists don't believe we're going to go to outright deflation for all prices. That is, we're not going to see the average of prices go down, although we'll see those individual prices in some sectors go down. But what we're looking at is a slower inflation rate. So rather than the 4 percent inflation that we saw earlier this year, in 2009 we may be looking at a rate half that size at 2 percent."