Fed’s Williams sees a calm market reaction to reducing its huge balance sheet

Kevork Djansezian | Bloomberg | Getty Images

John Williams, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

U.S. central banker John Williams said on Friday he does not expect market turbulence as the Fed gets under way with reducing its huge balance sheet.

“I don’t anticipate any sudden or large effects on rates or spreads or things like that as we normalize,” Williams, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve, told reporters in Zurich.

“Obviously we’ve talked about this endlessly. We’ve announced it and the markets have totally taken this in stride. But it’s still an open question as we actually implement this next month and over the next several years, how will markets react? Well obviously be following that very carefully.”