Federal Reserve officials at their latest meeting moved forward in plotting how they will shrink the central bank’s $9 trillion balance sheet, and tied relative calm in financial markets in the face of Russia’s attack on Ukraine to tools they set up to provide emergency lending.
Minutes of the March 15-16 Federal Open Market Committee meeting, released Wednesday, said no decision to launch a drawdown of the balance sheet had been made, though officials acknowledged it would happen soon. The minutes said that while cuts to the balance sheet would likely be phased in, Fed officials are considering selling no more than $60 billion in Treasury securities monthly and no more than $35 billion in mortgage-backed securities monthly.
