Despite the Fed’s predicament, investors seemed to interpret the report as an indication that more interest rate cuts might be in the offing. Stocks had been flat before the report was issued at 2 p.m. but turned upward in late trading, with the Dow Jones industrial average closing with a 90-point gain.

The Fed’s forecast, a compilation of predictions by its governors and presidents of its regional banks, was released as part of the minutes of two policy meetings in January.

Those meetings produced a surprise decision on Jan. 21 to slash the benchmark Federal funds rate by three-quarters of a point, to 3.5 percent, and a move on Jan. 30 to lower the rate an additional half-point.

Both of the policy meetings came at moments of turbulence and uncertainty in the economy, and together they amounted to a major course correction in policy.

The emergency meeting on the evening of Jan. 21, at which some of the regional Fed presidents spoke over a secure videoconference, took place on a day when stock markets plunged around the world on what appeared to be fear about economic problems in the United States.

Fed officials, meeting on a government holiday when the American markets were closed, stunned investors and analysts alike by slashing the overnight federal funds rate by three-quarters of a point, to 3.5 percent. Though Fed officials insisted they were not trying to rescue the stock markets, they were keenly aware from activity in the futures markets that American stocks were poised to plunge as soon as markets opened on Jan. 22.

Fed officials justified the surprise rate cut by pointing to a declining economic outlook, but they acknowledged that they had become increasingly worried about a “adverse feedback loop” or self-fulfilling prophecy in which fears in financial markets led to paralysis in the real economy.