the congress. to provide more - timely information about the evolving outlook, the federal reserve will release fomc participants'economic projections four times each year, rather than twice each year as we have done previously. projections will continue to be released in february and july of each year to coincide with the semiannual monetary policy report and the associated testimony to the congress. two additional sets of projections will be published in conjunction with the minutes of the fomc meetings held around the beginnings of the second quarter and the fourth quarter of the year ( in 2008, the april and october meetings ). the first expanded set of projections will be released next week, on november 20, together with the minutes of the october fomc meeting. the horizon of the projections will be extended from two years to three. the projections released next week will extend through 2010. 4 each of the participants in the fomc meeting – including the federal reserve board members and all the reserve bank presidents – will, as in the past, provide projections for the growth of real gross domestic product ( gdp ), the unemployment rate, and core inflation ( that is, inflation excluding the prices of food and energy items ). in addition, participants will now provide their projections for overall inflation. both overall and core inflation will continue to be based on the price index for personal consumption expenditures ( pce ). 5 projections will continue to be made independently by each fomc participant under the assumption of " appropriate " monetary policy, that is, the future evolution of the federal funds rate judged by that participant to be the one most likely to foster economic outcomes that satisfy the federal reserve's dual mandate. following past practice, we will publish the central tendency and the range of the projections for each variable and each year. 6 we will also publish a comparison with the previous set of quarterly projections ; a chart showing central tendencies and ranges for each variable ; and charts showing the distribution of participants'projections and how that distribution has changed since the previous release. accompanying the numerical projections will be a discussion – a projections " narrative " if you will – that summarizes participants'views of the major forces shaping the outlook, discusses the sources of risk to that outlook, and describes the dispersion of views among policymakers. by providing a medium - term perspective, the narrative will complement the discussion of shorter - term developments contained in the minutes. we will also provide qualitative information about participants'views on both the uncertainty and the balance of

. our efforts to further bolster the operational effectiveness of the federal reserve and the strength of the financial infrastructure continue today. each generation of policymakers has had to grapple with a changing portfolio of problems. so while we importantly draw on the experiences of our predecessors, we can be sure that we will confront different problems in the future. the federal reserve has been fortunate to have worked in a particularly favorable structural and political environment over the past quarter - century. but we trust that monetary policy has contributed meaningfully to the impressive performance of our economy in those years. i have been extraordinarily privileged to serve my country at the federal reserve during most of these years and would be honored if the senate saw fit to enable me to continue this service.