Federal Reserve officials predicted three bleak years for the U.S. economy, and the Federal Open Market Committee announced today that it intends to keep short-term interest rates extremely low until 2014 amid a pondering economic recovery.

In a twist that's both ironic and totally expected, the announcement that the economy will stink for the next three years improved the very, very short term prognosis of the recovery, since the promise of long-term low interest rates coincided with (and probably helped to cause) the bump in stock prices immediately following the FOMC announcement.

The FOMC doesn't have a perfect track record for predicting the future. After all, in early 2006, it anticipated two years of smooth sailing for the U.S. economy, and we all know what happened in the next two years. But it's worth taking a peak at FOMC predictions, via the San Francisco Fed, to understand why the FOMC is confident that inflation will stay put with interest rates guaranteed to kiss zero percent for the next two years.