In addition, the Federal Reserve and a number of other central banks have provided more guidance than usual about the likely future path of interest rates to help financial markets form more accurate expectations about policy in a highly uncertain economic and financial environment.
In particular, we were concerned that market participants would not fully appreciate for how long we anticipated keeping interest rates low. If they hadn’t, intermediate- and longer-term rates would have declined by less, reducing the stimulative effect of the very low policy rates. Given the severity of the downturn, it became clear that lowering short-term policy rates alone would not be sufficient.