HONG KONG, (Reuters) –Goldman Sachs believes the U.S. Federal Reserve will raise interest rates 50 basis points at their May and June meetings. This is in response to hawkish comments by Jerome Powell, the central bank chair.

Powell stated Monday that the Fed should move quickly to increase rates, and perhaps “more aggressively”, to prevent an upward spiral of prices from becoming entrenched.

Analysts wrote that “our best guess is that this shift from’steadily” in January to something more urgent today signals that we are about to see a 50bp rate increase,” in a late Monday report.

The analysts expect four additional 25-basis point rate increases in 2022. One at every Fed meeting during the second half, and three in 2023. However, the analysts left unchanged their prediction for Fed’s final rate at 3%-3.255%.

Last week, the Fed increased rates for the first-time since 2018