[T]he Fed needs to link open-ended policy explicitly to the economy, thereby removing the uncertainty associated with the previous arbitrary programs. I think anything less should be viewed as a dissappointment.
Weisenthal explains how today's Fed plan achieved this:
The Federal Reserve decision is out, and it's a biggie.... Whereas in the past the Fed always announced a specific amount of QE, this time there will be no stop until the Fed is happy with the pace of recovery.
Yglesias zeroes in on the guidance (i.e. the explicit plan to keep rates low):
Eyder Peralta translates the Fed's rationale:]]>But there's something much much much more important here than the numbers. It's the guidance.... The key thing is that they're no longer saying that accommodative monetary policy is conditional on the recovery being weak. Instead, interest rates will stay low for a while even after the economy recovers. In other words build that apartment building right now.