The Federal Reserve has interest rates right where they should be, but should start trimming its massive balance sheet in the second half of the year, St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard said on Friday.
“We’ve delayed a little bit too long in reducing the size of the balance sheet,” Bullard said in an interview with Reuters near the Stanford University campus, where he is attending a conference on monetary policy.
The Fed should first communicate its approach and then begin allowing the balance sheet to shrink “maybe sometime in the second half of the year,” he said, adding that the decision on the timing would be up to Fed Chair Janet Yellen.
The Fed has raised rates three times since the Great Recession, but left them unchanged at its meeting earlier this week. Strong jobs growth in April, reported earlier on Friday, has added to investor confidence