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Cleveland Fed's Hammack Flags AI as Inflation Risk, Opens Door to Rate Hikes

6/30/2026

Cleveland Federal Reserve President Beth Hammack said artificial intelligence could push inflation higher and that interest rate increases may again become necessary, warning in a CNBC interview with Sarah Eisen that price pressures have not been tamed.

Hammack framed the problem in blunt terms: inflation has been "too high" for the past five years and remains so.

A New Variable in an Old Fight Hammack's comments introduce AI as a structural inflation driver, not merely a productivity story.

The argument shifts the conversation away from the familiar post-pandemic supply-chain narrative toward a longer-duration concern: that the energy demands, capital spending, and wage competition associated with large-scale AI buildout could keep price pressures elevated even as the Fed holds rates at restrictive levels.

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