My comments today reflect my own views and are not an official position of the Board of Governors or the Federal Open Market Committee. I would like to thank the Council on Foreign Relations for the kind invitation to come meet with all of you this morning. I am looking forward to a lively discussion.
To get things started, I thought I could provide some background on recent monetary policy decisions. As you all know, at our December meeting my colleagues and I on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) decided to raise the target range for the federal funds rate by 1/4 percentage point, to 1/4 to 1/2 percent.