Fed's Paulson says the September inflation numbers drove the rate hike

The more consequential line is the explicit openness to another hike, since conditional language of that kind from a sitting official has historically mattered less for its own content than for whether it is echoed by colleagues, the pattern being that lone hawks shift pricing at the margin while a converging chorus shifts the median. The argument that AI-related investment is adding to inflation pressure is a relatively novel channel in official rhetoric, worth noting because it frames a supply-side, investment-driven impulse rather than the usual demand or shelter story, and officials who adopt that framing have tended to stay hawkish longer since the impulse is not one policy directly suppresses. The characterisation of the labour market as stable alongside stubborn underlying inflation is the standard justification for restrictive-for-longer, and it raises the sensitivity of the next inflation releases relative to employment data. The tells are whether other officials adopt the same data-attribution and whether the remarks survive contact with the next print.