Wall Street drifted modestly lower early Thursday amid increasing anxiety following Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell's warning to Congress this week that rate hikes might accelerate because upward pressure on prices has been stronger than expected.
Futures for the Dow Jones Industrials slipped 0.1% and the S&P 500 fell 0.3% before the bell.
The concern is that in efforts to cool inflation, the Fed and other central banks may tip the global economy into at least a brief recession. U.S. inflation edged up in January to 5.