Newsroom

December 15, 2014

FOMC 2-day policy setting session begins

The Federal Open Market Committee begins a two-day policy setting session today that will determine the Fed's next moves, if any, for the economy now that it has announced the end of its asset-purchase program.

In October, the FOMC stated that it would maintain its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its holdings of agency debt and agency mortgage-back securities in agency-backed securities and of rolling over maturing Treasury securities at auction.

The committee repeated its earlier language about keeping its 0 to 0.25 percent target range for the federal funds rates for "a considerable time" following the wrap-up of the purchasing program. However, the committee changed its previous characterization of the "significant underutilization" of labor market resources to a comment that the underutilization of resources is "gradually diminishing."

During the two-day meeting that begins today, FOMC participants will update their economic analysis and Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen will do a press conference following the end of the meeting on Wednesday. NAFCU's research team will issue a Macro Data Flash summarizing the meeting on Wednesday afternoon.