Powell's five inflation benchmarks are starting to flash amber

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s inflation dashboard is starting to show some signs of overheating.

From spreading price increases to rising wages, it’s signaling more caution on the inflation front than when Powell unveiled the benchmarks less than three months ago.

In a speech to the Fed’s annual Jackson Hole conference, held virtually in late August, Powell sketched out five ways of assessing the outlook for inflation and argued that each of them suggested there was no cause for alarm.

But a report last week showed consumer prices skyrocketed by 6.2% in October from a year earlier, led by cars, food, gasoline, electricity and fuel oil. The personal consumption expenditures price index, the Fed’s favored inflation gauge, rose at a year-on-year rate of 4.4% in September, the most since 1991 and well above the central bank’s 2% target.