Federal Reserve officials were almost unanimous in their expectations of continued interest rate hikes when they met in June but were less united on when to begin reducing its record balance sheet, according to minutes released Wednesday.
At the June 13-14 meeting, all but one voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee approved raising the federal funds rate by 25 basis points, despite muted inflation numbers. The lone dissenter, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, argued the Fed should wait for more improvement in inflation numbers.
FOMC members expected the impact of the balance sheet normalization "to be limited," the minutes said. At the June meeting, Fed officials said they expect that an initial cap of $6 billion per month on assets allowed to mature will increase $6 billion every three months for a year until reaching $30 billion per month, and for agency debt and mortgage-backed securities, a monthly cap of $4 billion per month and increasing by $4 billion at three-month intervals over 12 months until it reaches $20 billion per month. Committee members differed on the timing of the balance sheet sell-off.
