At present, the Committee anticipates that economic and financial conditions will likely warrant maintaining the current range “for the federal funds rate for a considerable time after the asset purchase program ends, especially if projected inflation continues to run below the Committee’s 2 percent longer-run goal, and provided that longer-term inflation expectations remain well anchored.” 25 Finally, the Committee began explaining more fully how policy may operate in the period after liftoff, indicating its expectation that economic conditions may, for some time, warrant keeping short-term interest rates below levels the Committee views as likely to prove normal in the longer run.
FOMC participants have cited different reasons for this view, but many of the reasons involve persistent effects of the financial crisis and the possibility that the productive capacity of the economy will grow more slowly, at least for a time, than it did, on average, before the crisis.