Jerome Powell sagt, Sie haben Recht, wenn Sie Rechenzentren dafür verantwortlich machen, dass sie Ihre Rechnungen verteuern: „Das treibt wahrscheinlich die Inflation in die Höhe.“

Fed Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged Wednesday that the AI-fueled data center boom is contributing to inflation, pushing back on the popular argument that the productivity gains from artificial intelligence should be bringing prices down already.

“In the short term, what’s happening is we’re building data centers everywhere, and that’s actually putting pressure on all kinds of goods and services that go into building these things,” Powell said at a press conference following the Fed’s decision to hold interest rates steady. “So that’s actually probably pushing inflation up.”

The comments came in response to a question about whether the Fed’s own long-run growth estimates—which officials revised up from 1.8% to 2%—reflected optimism about AI-driven productivity, and whether that should translate into lower inflation and lower rates.

Powell wasn’t buying the logic, at least not yet. He said AI likely raises the neutral interest rate in the near term rather than lowering it, because the demand side—the massive physical buildout required to power AI—is running ahead of any productivity payoff.

Read more: [https://fortune.com/2026/03/19/jerome-powell-ai-data-centers-causing-inflation-electricity-bills-affordability/](https://fortune.com/2026/03/19/jerome-powell-ai-data-centers-causing-inflation-electricity-bills-affordability/)

AI making everything worse, not just the images on video games.

it’s wild how we’re payin‘ the price for tech upgrades; guess we gotta expect a lil‘ pain in the wallet for all this „progress,“ huh?

It doesn’t actually change anything, but I can’t deny it is a (small) relief to hear someone who is in some position of power let me know I’m not fucking crazy. The 24/7 gaslighting is exhausting. 

Executive mantra: Costs are passed to consumers

All hail our billionaire overlords. Making our lives better with their technology.

Funny how we have money, resources and zoning laws to build these massive data centers but we can’t seem to build affordable homes for people.

This is why economic debates online get so dumb so fast. everyone talks like the data is gospel, then Powell basically says the readings may be distorted. if the gauges are wrong, then both the „everything is strong“ crowd and the „collapse is here“ crowd might be overconfident. so whats the smarter move for the fed: wait for cleaner data, or act before bad data causes a policy mistake?

Daily reminder that they and most businesses have lower unit costs for utilities than the residents in the community. They also have better service level guarantees. Remember that next time your power or water bill goes up.

He’s going down fightin‘ — good for him!

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There are two data centers being built in my rural Texas county right now. I haven’t seen one of them but my wife has, about 5 miles from our place, and she says its massive – like the Costco from Idiocracy massive. (Welcome to Costco, I love you)

The other is a behemoth – about 15-20 miles away between two small cities. I believe its Microsoft, but not sure. And wouldn’t you know, a massive new water pipeline project just sprung up on the county road we live on…well, and connecting across and down several county roads.

The first will impact our water for certain just on its own, but our little coop is banding together with surrounding to better manage resources, hence the pipeline.

Also, we’re in a drought and I barely have enough grass for my little hobby herd of cattle. I pay a maintenance fee for the irrigation canal that runs next to my property that’s been dry three years in a row. It got down to 33 degrees Tuesday and will hit 95 this weekend.

I mean, sure, otherwise, everything is swell. This is not going to end well, folks. At least cattle prices are still batshit insane and while I am going to hang on as best I can, I might just have to punch out if we don’t get some rain soon.

Stupid thing is that the local board constantly rejects proposals for new (small) neighborhoods and subdivisions based on water supply. But the closer of the data centers being built is an economic black hole for the county, near a dying little town (that I technically live in for postal purposes)

How does that happen? No to this, but hell yeah to that? Its like my work where confirmation and compliance of conflict of interest for government contracting is onerous and tedious while you see blatant corruption and influence trading taking place. Different sets of conditional rules based on…well, probably slinging a few sacks of cash around.

But but but we need them for the most useless fucking technology ever created.

I love being told by the „the infrastructure can’t handle electric cars“ crowd that giant data centers are no problem at all and that we’re all just delusional

Question, if datacenters all somehow got shut down or destroyed, how would my life be impacted, specifically?  Would we only notice the benefits?

Data centers but not the war?

Can’t wait to have our clean drinking water, a finite resource, go towards cooling computers that are powering AI that will take jobs from human beings.

Data centers that eliminate good jobs. Trump and company puts the brakes on green energy while china ramps it up.