But if the data suggest that the return to full capacity is going more slowly than we thought, we would then need to move more slowly. Allow me to close by using the familiar car analogy. Over the past year we put our foot on the gas to help us get up the hill of economic difficulties.
On another matter, over the past few months there has been quite a lot of interest in the regular special papers considered by the Board. This followed the release of the minutes of the July meeting, which recorded that the Board had held a discussion of the neutral interest rate (that is, the rate at which monetary policy is neither expansionary nor contractionary).