When 2010 began, the United States economy seemed to be on the mend and leaders of the Federal Reserve discussed how they would unwind their extraordinary interventions from the crisis of the preceding two years. By the time it ended, the Fed was pumping another $75 billion a month into the financial system by buying bonds, aiming to keep the young expansion from falling apart.

Newly released transcripts show how the Fed got from Point A to Point B. Released Friday after the customary five-year lag, the eight meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee (plus two unscheduled emergency conference calls) show, in real time, how the Fed under Chairman Ben S. Bernanke came to the conclusion that the economy was in greater peril than it had seemed at the start of the year and how new action would be needed to guard against a new recession or fall into a deflationary trap.

The transcripts also show how Fed officials grappled with the crisis in the Eurozone, especially Greece, that nearly spiraled out of control in the spring and again in the fall. But the signature action of the Fed in 2010 was the November decision to launch the program known as “QE2,” a second round of quantitative easing that consisted of the Fed buying $600 billion in Treasury bonds over the course of nine months.

It was a hard-fought battle internally, with several of Mr. Bernanke’s colleagues either reluctant supporters or outright opponents of the action. The bond buying also caused considerable political blowback both in the United States and abroad.

As The Times reviews the hundreds of pages of transcripts, we are adding notable or revealing exchanges and nuggets here as we find them.