The Federal Open Market Committee, as expected, did see signs that the pace of the contraction in the economy was starting to diminish, but quickly added that the signs were mostly tentative in nature, according to a summary released Wednesday of their closed-door meeting at the end of April. In their formal projections of the economy, the FOMC said that the unemployment rate would peak at or just below 10% this year. FOMC members lowered their forecasts relative to the projections they made in January, but this was expected given the weak data in the first two months of the year. FOMC members continue to expect a recovery in sales and production to being during the second half of 2009. But the recovery is going to be slow and could take five years or more before the unemployment rate drops back under 5%.
