"The Zero Decade"

That's the best way to understand the FOMC's remarkable announcements on Wednesday, followed by Mr. Bernanke's quarterly press conference. The central bank had already promised to keep short-term rates near-zero through most of 2013, but now it feels the need to assure investors it will keep them there through the end of 2014. That would be six years in total, more than half of what may eventually become known as the Fed's Zero Decade.

Mull that one over: The Fed is declaring that it needs to run the same super-easy monetary policy when the economy is growing by 2% or 3% as it did amid the worst of the financial panic. And keep doing it past the horizon. The unavoidable implication is that the Fed doesn't think the economy will grow any faster until what would be halfway through Mr. Obama's second term. The other implication is that the Fed has no idea what to do other than to push even harder on the monetary accelerator. Maybe this time, it hopes, the economy's clutch will engage.

This not-so-quiet desperation was clear in a second Fed release that hasn't received as much attention as it deserves. In a statement redefining how it interprets its policy mandate from Congress, the FOMC said it has "reached broad agreement" on new operating principles.

The Fed's dual mandates are stable prices and full employment, and the Fed said sometimes the two are complementary. But from now on when they're in conflict, the Fed essentially said, it will put inflation aside and instead focus principally on cutting joblessness.

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Recall that during the last decade the Fed assured everyone there was nothing to worry about as it kept rates too low for too long, only to create a housing bubble it never did recognize...

Where will the risk-taking excesses show up this time? Who knows, and perhaps the Fed will retreat before the worst happens. But it was fascinating to see last week that investors were willing to buy $15 billion in 10-year Treasury inflation-protected securities, or Tips, despite a negative real yield. That's right, investors were willing to accept negative current returns in exchange for security against a future inflation breakout.