NEW YORK (Reuters) – JPMorgan Chase & Co Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon on Thursday warned that persistent and elevated inflation could spur interest rates to rise higher than 4.5%.

Consumers are in strong financial health, and are still spending robustly, he told attendees at the Institute of International Finance meeting in Washington.

“They can probably do that for another nine months before inflation and spending catches up with them, which is why I think you’re going to see a strong economy for a while.”

Thereafter, policy makers may have to increase interest rates to more than 4.5% to tame inflation, he said.

(Reporting by Lananh Nguyen, Niket Nishant and Saeed Azhar; editing by Jonathan Oatis)