12:41 PM EDT, 07/10/2024 (MT Newswires) -- The Federal Reserve has "ways to go" on reducing its balance sheet, Chair Jerome Powell told the House Financial Services Committee Wednesday.

"The run off in the portfolio is now, I think, $1.7 trillion so far. So we've made quite a lot of progress," Powell said. "We think we have a good ways to go."

The Fed started to conduct quantitative tightening in June 2022 to shrink the size of its balance sheet.

"We've now slowed the pace, with a view to getting as far as we can without creating frictions and disruption that might cause us to prematurely stop shrinking," Powell said. "Going a little bit slower might actually enable us to go further."

"It's very hard to be precise about" when this cycle of quantitative tightening will end, he said. "It's really a question of supply and demand. We will find that level with a little bit of a buffer on top of it, and that's where we'll stop."