AXIOS (Courtenay Brown) - Battles to shrink the Federal Reserve's balance sheet begin
Data: Federal Reserve; Chart: Neil Irwin/Axios Incoming Federal Reserve chief Kevin Warsh's ambition to shrink the central bank's multitrillion-dollar bond portfolio may quickly run into hard limits. Why it matters: For nearly two decades, the Fed's ability to flood markets with liquidity has been among its most powerful crisis-fighting weapons — and, in Warsh's view, too often a go-to tool for monetary stimulus outside of crises. - Now, the hot discussion among Fed officials and commentators is about how to responsibly shrink the Fed's asset portfolio — and whether that's even a worthwhile goal. The big picture: The Fed's assets ballooned from about $800 billion before the 2008 financial crisis to nearly $9 trillion at its 2022 peak…