we’re committed to maintaining our economy’s strength by supporting maximum employment and returning inflation to our 2% goal to that end today the Federal Open Market Committee decided to take another step in reducing the degree of policy restraint by lowering our policy interest rate by a quarter percentage point we also decided to continue to reduce our Securities Holdings overall improving Supply conditions have supported the strong performance of the US economy over the past year in our summary of economic projections committee participants generally expect GDP growth to remain solid with a median projection of about 2% over the next few years