The Federal Open Market Committee expressed qualified confidence in the recovery.  And the Federal Reserve will be keeping interest rates low, and will bring about an end of its second round of quantitative easing.  From the FOMC release:

Consistent with its statutory mandate, the Committee seeks to foster maximum employment and price stability.  The unemployment rate remains elevated, and measures of underlying inflation continue to be somewhat low, relative to levels that the Committee judges to be consistent, over the longer run, with its dual mandate.  Increases in the prices of energy and other commodities have pushed up inflation in recent months.  The Committee expects these effects to be transitory, but it will pay close attention to the evolution of inflation and inflation expectations.  The Committee continues to anticipate a gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization in a context of price stability.

To promote a stronger pace of economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at levels consistent with its mandate, the Committee decided today to continue expanding its holdings of securities as announced in November.  In particular, the Committee is maintaining its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its securities holdings and will complete purchases of $600 billion of longer-term Treasury securities by the end of the current quarter.  The Committee will regularly review the size and composition of its securities holdings in light of incoming information and is prepared to adjust those holdings as needed to best foster maximum employment and price stability.

Read the full press release here.

Following the FOMC meeting, Fed chair Ben Bernanke spoke in a highly anticipated press conference.  And he defended the Fed's decision to end QE2, saying that the policy was "never meant to be a cure-all."  Here is a video excerpt from the Wall Street Journal:

And for some interpretation of Bernanke's presser, we turn to MoneyWatch, where Mark Thoma discussed the Fed's latest announcements with MoneyWatch.com editors Eric Schurenberg, Jill Schlesinger and Jack Otter: