For more than a century, the Economic Club of New York has served as one of the nation's leading nonpartisan forums for discussion of economic policy issues. It is an honor to appear before you today to speak about the Federal Reserve's pursuit of maximum employment and price stability. In December, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) raised the target range for the federal funds rate, the Federal Reserve's main policy rate, by 1/4 percentage point. This small step marked the end of an extraordinary seven-year period during which the federal funds rate was held near zero to support the recovery from the worst ... (full story)