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Annual Report of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

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Minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee

The policy actions of the Federal Open Market Committee, recorded in the minutes of its meetings, are available in the Annual Report of the Board of Governors pursuant to the requirements of section 10 of the Federal Reserve Act. That section provides that the Board shall keep a complete record of the actions taken by the Board and by the Federal Open Market Committee on all questions of policy relating to open market operations, that it shall record therein the votes taken in connection with the determination of open market policies and the reasons underlying each policy action, and that it shall include in its annual report to Congress a full account of such actions. Links to the minutes for each of the eight regularly scheduled meetings held in 2020 are in the list below.

Meeting Minutes

The minutes of the meetings contain the votes on the policy decisions made at those meetings, as well as a summary of the information and discussions that led to the decisions. In addition, a Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) was published as an addendum to the minutes of the June and September 2020 meetings.1 The descriptions of economic and financial conditions in the minutes and the SEP are based solely on the information that was available to the Committee at the time of the meetings.

Members of the Committee voting for a particular action may differ among themselves as to the reasons for their votes; in such cases, the range of their views is noted in the minutes. When members dissent from a decision, they are identified in the minutes and a summary of the reasons for their dissent is provided.

Policy directives of the Federal Open Market Committee are issued to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as the Bank selected by the Committee to execute transactions for the System Open Market Account. In the area of domestic open market operations, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York operates under instructions from the Federal Open Market Committee that take the form of an Authorization for Domestic Open Market Operations and a Domestic Policy Directive. (A new Domestic Policy Directive is adopted at each regularly scheduled meeting.) In the foreign currency area, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York operates under an Authorization for Foreign Currency Operations and a Foreign Currency Directive. Changes in the instruments during the year are reported in the minutes for the individual meetings.2

For more information about the Federal Open Market Committee's meetings, statements, and minutes, visit the Board's website at https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomccalendars.htm.

Footnotes

 1. No projections were submitted in conjunction with the March 2020 meeting. The December 2020 meeting was the first meeting for which all the SEP exhibits were published at 2 p.m. on the second day of the meeting, instead of being included as part of an addendum to the minutes. The written portion of the SEP that described the exhibits, which had also previously been part of the addendum to the meeting minutes, was discontinued. Return to text

 2. As of January 1, 2020, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York was operating under the Domestic Policy Directive approved at the December 10–11, 2019, Committee meeting. The other policy instruments (the Authorization for Domestic Open Market Operations, the Authorization for Foreign Currency Operations, and the Foreign Currency Directive) in effect as of January 1, 2020, were approved at the January 29–30, 2019, meeting. Return to text

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Last Update: August 26, 2021