Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell reaffirmed the central bank's determination to lower inflation and said aggressive rate hikes are possible as early as next month.

Powell's remarks are essentially in line with market expectations that the Fed will back off its usual 25 basis point hikes and move faster to curb inflation, which has reached its highest rate in more than 40 years. A basis point is equal to 0.01 percentage points.

However, as Powell noted, the market pricing for rate hikes has become somewhat more aggressive.