A brief summary of their statement is, “Sh%$ is f%$#ed up, and we have to do something.”

Federal Reserve officials expect to leave interest rates near zero for years — through at least 2023 — and will tolerate periods of higher inflation as they try to revive the labor market and economy, based on their September policy statement and economic projections released Wednesday.

The announcement codifies that the Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, and his colleagues plan to be extraordinarily patient as they try to cushion the economy in the months and years ahead.

The policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee “expects it will be appropriate to maintain this target range until labor market conditions have reached levels consistent with the committee’s assessments of maximum employment and inflation has risen to 2 percent and is on track to moderately exceed 2 percent for some time,” officials said in their statement.

………

The Fed updated its Summary of Economic Projections, a set of estimates for how the economy and interest rates will develop in coming years. Officials saw unemployment ending 2020 at a lower rate than it previously forecast: The median official expects the rate to average 7.6 percent over the final three months of the year, compared with 9.3 percent when the Fed released its last set of projections in June.

It’s not a bad policy, but it comes from a horrible reality.