The U.S. Federal Reserve must act boldly in raising interest rates in order to contain inflation before higher expectations become entrenched, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said on Friday.

"We have to act forthrightly and aggressively to get inflation to turn around and get it under control...or you could suffer a decade of high and variable inflation," Bullard said during a panel discussion on central banks and inflation hosted by UBS in Zurich, Switzerland.

"So frontload today, get inflation under control in short order and get inflation back on a path to 2%," Bullard added.