The Federal Reserve's Federal Open Market Committee, which tightens or loosens the faucet on the money supply, decided today to keep the taps almost wide open, maintaining the target for a key short-term interest rate at close to zero. But it is starting to throttle down its campaign to hold down long-term interest rates. It said it will wind down a $300 billion program to buy Treasury securities by October even as it continues to buy mortgage-related debt through the end of the year.

It also said "economic activity is leveling out," a more optimistic appraisal than the Fed's June 24 report that "the pace of economic contraction is slowing."

Otherwise the committee tweaked its statement to reflect that time has passed since the last meeting in June. But it's basically the same. No sign that the Fed will increase short-term rates anytime soon, which is what Wall Street was mainly worried about.

In June financial markets had "generally improved," said the official statement. Today it said markets "have improved further in recent weeks."

June: "Household spending has shown further signs of stabilizing but remains constrained by ongoing job losses, lower housing wealth, and tight credit." Today: "Household spending has continued to show signs of stabilizing but remains constrained by ongoing job losses, sluggish income growth, lower housing wealth, and tight credit."

They added "sluggish income growth" to the list of weights on the economy.

For June and today, the language on the outlook is identical: "Although economic activity is likely to remain weak for a time, the Committee continues to anticipate that policy actions to stabilize financial markets and institutions, fiscal and monetary stimulus, and market forces will contribute to a gradual resumption of sustainable economic growth in a context of price stability."

Here ends the exegesis of Mr. Bernanke's text. Now let's see if we can get John McIntyre of You Don't Say to see if it scans.

UPDATE: from T. Rowe Price chief economist Alan Levenson, in a note to clients:

In our view, the Committee is not going to raise rates until the unemployment rate has rolled over, which is the better part of a year away. And policy makers would rather not signal that they're even thinking about raising the funds rate ("removing accommodation") until the economy has moved broadly into expansion, including a trend of rising monthly increases in payroll employment (as opposed to the current trend of diminishing rates of decline).