Bloomberg Surveillance · Thursday, August 13, 2026
Lydia Mashburn of the American Institute for Economic Research cautioned that while recent CPI and PPI prints show some disinflation, a closer look at demand-side pressures is needed. She highlighted that services inflation remains at 3.0% in CPI, indicating continued demand pressure that the Fed can address. Mashburn suggested that the Fed may need to consider a rate hike sooner rather than later to avoid harsher hikes in the medium to long term.
“But we also need to be looking at these numbers are going to be feed the PPI numbers are going to be feeding into CPI and we'll get that print before the next meeting. And really what we need to be looking at are things outside of the energy trade sectors. When we look at services and flat and CPI we're still at three point zero percent. These are things that indicate that the demand side of the economy still has a lot of pressure, and that's the part that the FED can and should do something about.”
“And so all this says to me that maybe Beth Hammock is right. The FED maybe should pump the brakes a little bit and hike by twenty five basis points sooner than later. Otherwise markets are going to be getting I think, much higher harsher hikes over the medium and longer term.”