Quantitative tightening
The reverse process: the central bank shrinks its bond portfolio and withdraws money from the system.
How to read the number
It proceeds slowly and usually by declining to reinvest maturing bonds rather than by selling — an outright sale would break the government bond market it operates in.
When the metric lies
Its effect is hard to separate from the effect of the policy rate, since both move at the same time and in the same direction.
Also known as: balance sheet runoff