Not long after that, the staff began the current practice of circulating even earlier drafts of the statements so that policymakers could let them know if the various alternatives covered the plausible set of options for the meeting. Initially, the Committee discussed the statement wording only after the policy vote was taken.
This is because inflation expectations seem to be anchored at around 2 percent in the United States and Europe, with the price indexes showing that the underlying trend has been at around 1.5 percent, despite the past experience of the substantial decline in crude oil prices.