The Federal Reserve is ready to raise interest rates and shrink the nearly $9 trillion balance sheet, minutes from last month’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting show. Policymakers discussed that the timing and pace of shrinking the balance sheet would be determined by the rate-setting committee’s dual mandate of full employment and price stability objectives. Although the FOMC is adopting a meeting-by-meeting approach to quantitative tightening, “participants generally noted that current economic and financial conditions would likely warrant a faster pace of balance sheet runoff than during the period of balance sheet reduction from 2017 to 2019.” Moving forward, the officials agreed that “a significant reduction in the size of the balance would likely be appropriate,” adding that market conditions would be monitored closely to find an “appropriate longer-run level of reserves and the size of the balance sheet.” While March is the end date of its pandemic-era asset-buying …