Insight - Central banks face new balancing act with their huge asset piles

Even as asset purchases continue, with hundreds of billions of dollars spent each month, officials at the US Federal Reserve(pic) and the European Central Bank (ECB) are among those figuring out how – or if – they can reduce asset piles that have been a mainstay of financial markets for more than a decade.

CENTRAL bankers around the world are mulling the future of their massive bond-buying programmes in a post-pandemic world, knowing that with big balance sheets come big expectations.

The Group of Seven developed economies piled on about US$7 trillion (RM28.90 trillion) in debt last year as they spent heavily to fight the pandemic and prop up their economies. Central banks ended up owning much of that new debt, according to Bloomberg Economics.