Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke embarked on a new tradition when he followed the Fed Open Market Committee Meeting with a Q&A session for reporters. If anyone truly knows where this economy is headed, it would have to be Bernanke, so let's listen in:
* The Fed won't be raising interest rates, he said, for at least a couple more of its regular meetings. The group meets roughly every six weeks, so we shouldn't expect it to hike interest rates for at least another three months.
* He sounds as if he will focus more on tamping down inflation than pushing up unemployment (the Fed is officially tasked with both those duties): "In my view, we can't achieve a sustainable recovery without keeping inflation under control."
* The Fed itself said it expects our GDP to grow at somewhere between 3.1 and 3.3 percent overall this year. In January, it's forecast for the year had been growth of between 3.4 and 3.9 percent.
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