Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met inNovember suggests that economic activity has continued to pick upand that the deterioration in the labor market is abating. Thehousing sector has shown some signs of improvement over recentmonths. Household spending appears to be expanding at a moderaterate, though it remains constrained by a weak labor market, modestincome growth, lower housing wealth, and tight credit. Businessesare still cutting back on fixed investment, though at a slowerpace, and remain reluctant to add to payrolls; they continue tomake progress in bringing inventory stocks into better alignmentwith sales. Financial market conditions have become more supportiveof economic growth. Although economic activity is likely to remainweak for a time, the Committee anticipates that policy actions tostabilize financial markets and institutions, fiscal and monetarystimulus, and market forces will contribute to a strengthening ofeconomic growth and a gradual return to higher levels of resourceutilization in a context of price stability.
With substantial resource slack likely to continue to dampen costpressures and with longer-term inflation expectations stable, theCommittee expects that inflation will remain subdued for sometime.
TheCommittee will maintain the target range for the federal funds rateat 0 to 1/4 percent and continues to anticipate that economicconditions, including low rates of resource utilization, subduedinflation trends, and stable inflation expectations, are likely towarrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for anextended period. To provide support to mortgage lending and housingmarkets and to improve overall conditions in private creditmarkets, the Federal Reserve is in the process of purchasing $1.25trillion of agency mortgage-backed securities and about $175billion of agency debt. In order to promote a smooth transition inmarkets, the Committee is gradually slowing the pace of thesepurchases, and it anticipates that these transactions will beexecuted by the end of the first quarter of 2010. The Committeewill continue to evaluate the timing and overall amounts of itspurchases of securities in light of the evolving economic outlookand conditions in financial markets.
Inlight of ongoing improvements in the functioning of financialmarkets, the Committee and the Board of Governors anticipate thatmost of the Federal Reserve's special liquidity facilitieswill expire on February 1, 2010, consistent with the FederalReserve's announcement of June 25, 2009. These facilitiesinclude the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual FundLiquidity Facility, the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, thePrimary Dealer Credit Facility, and the Term Securities LendingFacility. The Federal Reserve will also be working with its centralbank counterparties to close its temporary liquidity swaparrangements by February 1. The Federal Reserve expects thatamounts provided under the Term Auction Facility will continue tobe scaled back in early 2010. The anticipated expiration dates forthe Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility remain set at June30, 2010, for loans backed by new-issue commercial mortgage-backedsecurities and March 31, 2010, for loans backed by all other typesof collateral. The Federal Reserve is prepared to modify theseplans if necessary to support financial stability and economicgrowth.
Voting for the FOMC monetary policy action were: Ben S. Bernanke,Chairman; William C. Dudley, Vice Chairman; Elizabeth A. Duke;Charles L. Evans; Donald L. Kohn; Jeffrey M. Lacker; Dennis P.Lockhart; Daniel K. Tarullo; Kevin M. Warsh; and Janet L.Yellen.
Our assignment is to write an FOMC statement similiar towhat we believe the real FOMC statement, released by thegovernemnt, will be like. What topics will it cover and what thingswill the government change?