Krugman Admits- Inflation 'WILL' be a Problem

This is from Krugman New York Times blog....

But leaving the debt ceiling on one side, isn’t it true that since spending can currently be financed by Fed money printing, we shouldn’t care at all about the notional debt owed to the Fed? Alas, no.

It’s true that printing money isn’t at all inflationary under current conditions — that is, with the economy depressed and interest rates up against the zero lower bound. But eventually these conditions will end. At that point, to prevent a sharp rise in inflation the Fed will want to pull back much of the monetary base it created in response to the crisis, which means selling off the Federal debt it bought. So even though right now that debt is just a claim by one more or less governmental agency on another governmental agency, it will eventually turn into debt held by the public.

We are living in weird economic times, where many of the usual rules don’t apply and there are big free lunches to be had. But not everything is a free lunch, even now. Sorry.

I wonder is Krugman realizes that in economics there are no free lunches, just people and companies willing to take risk for potential reward. I also wonder if he has fully thought through the process of the Fed pulling back much on the monetary base it created and the major market disruptions that would likely create. Maybe I am being short-sited, but I really cannot see how the Fed can reduce its balance by $2 to $3 trillion, if the Fed's balance sheet does increase to an estimated $4 trillion, without some economic pain.