Bond Purchases by Fed Will Continue, at Least for Another Month

Charles Dharapak/Associated Press

Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, at a House committee meeting last month.

By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve issued a 700-word statement on Wednesday, but four words would have sufficed: see you in September.

As expected, the Fed’s policy-making committee voted to press ahead for now with its campaign to increase job creation. And its statement said nothing about how much longer it would continue to add $85 billion a month to its holdings of mortgage-backed securities and Treasury securities. But the Fed left its economic outlook basically unchanged, suggesting that the central bank still intended to reduce the volume of its purchases later this year.

The statement, issued after a regular two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, acknowledged the weak pace of growth during the first half of the year, which it described as “modest” rather than “moderate” — the words are synonymous in English but distinct in the Fed’s carefully calibrated lexicon, suggesting an even more lackluster economic performance. But it maintained the Fed’s forecast that “economic growth will pick up from its recent pace” in the coming months, driving job creation.