Fed officials preparing to slow pace of balance sheet runoff

Federal Reserve officials are preparing to notably slow the pace at which they allow Treasury securities to come off the Fed’s balance sheet as they prepare for an eventual end to the drawdown.

According to minutes released on Wednesday of the Fed’s latest policy meeting, held on March 19-20, officials are mindful of the turbulence caused by their last balance sheet drawdown and are preparing to make sure there will not be a replay of the volatility seen in September 2019.

With that in mind, officials last month “broadly assessed it would be appropriate to take a cautious approach to further runoff,” the minutes said, and “the vast majority of participants thus judged it would be prudent to begin slowing the pace of runoff fairly soon.”

“Participants generally favored reducing the monthly pace of runoff by roughly half from the recent overall pace,” the minutes said, and officials aim to do this by tweaking the runoff of Treasuries and leaving in place the cap on mortgage bond runoff.