Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari on Thursday said the U.S. central bank needs to get "very very" high inflation down as soon as possible, even at the cost of possibly triggering a recession.

"We need to get inflation down urgently," Kashkari said at an event at the YPO Gold Twin Cities. "We need to get demand down" by raising interest rates. Economic fundamentals are strong, he said, but whether the Fed can lower inflation without sending the economy into a recession, he said, "I don't know."