I, Peter Schiff and a few others outside the mainstream have said the Fed won't be able to do this.

Why not?

The Fed first expanded its balance sheet in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Through three rounds of quantitative easing (QE), the Fed expanded its balance sheet from under $1 trillion to $4.5 trillion. When the central bank started QE, then-Fed Chair Ben Bernanke swore the central bank wasn't monetizing federal government debt. He said the balance sheet expansion was an emergency measure and that the Fed would eventually sell the bonds it was buying.

The Fed didn't get around to balance sheet reduction until 2018, and it did so at a relatively slow pace. By the time it ended tightening in August 2019, the balance sheet was just below $3.8 trillion. In all, the Fed shed about $700 billion from its balance sheet in a little more than 18 months.

Why did the Fed abandon tightening in 2019?

Because in the fall of 2018, the stock market tanked and the economy went wobbly. The markets and the economy couldn't handle even the modest monetary tightening the Fed managed to implement.

It's important to remember that the Fed resumed QE months before the pandemic — although it didn't call it QE. By the time the Fed launched QE 4 in 2020, the balance sheet had already expanded back to just over $4 trillion.