Fed’s Hammack Says It’s Time to Act to Bring Down Inflation

(Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Beth Hammack said it's time for the US central bank to act to cool inflation.

"Right now, what I'm hearing is that it's time to act," Hammack said Friday in a LinkedIn post.

Hammack, one of three policymakers to dissent from the Fed's decision to hold interest rates steady in July, said both data and anecdotes from her district are telling her that monetary policy is not sufficiently weighing on the economy right now.

In her post she described a conversation with a manufacturer in Northeast Ohio who told her the Fed should raise interest rates because he's seeing double-digit inflation in many of his input prices.

Policymakers next meet Sept. 15-16 to vote on interest rates. They enter a communications blackout period at midnight. Investors put the odds of a rate increase at this month's meeting at slightly above 60% after a surprisingly strong jobs report on Friday.