2013-13 Less of the monetary stimulus

The FED has been meeting in Washington and is expected to change the current policy of purchasing $85 billion of assets every month
The FED has been buying long-term securities in huge amounts as a part of three-element strategy to stimulate the economy:
1. A traditional approach: lower the short-term interest rates;
2. Forward guidance: promise to keep short-term interest rates low for an extended period of time (until unemployment falls to 6.5%);
3. Quantitative easing: purchases of long term securities

2 and 3 are unconventional and were introduced following the Great Recession. The reason: zero bound on interest rates. The currents level of interest rates can be found here.
The important rate is the first one: the Federal Funds Rate; this Wikipedia article explains what it is.
Since short-term interest rates cannot be reduced further, hence the need for extra measures.

The goal of these measures is to increase liquidity in the economy, promoting lending and investment. This also creates a potential problem since more liquidity leads, in normal times, to inflation. As long as the economy is depressed inflation does not increase. The task of the FED is to reduce the stimulus in such a way that
- the economy does not suffer too much
- inflation does not rise too much

The whole thing is unprecedented. Monetary policy is a mixture of science (whereby the decision-makers use available evidence and the knowledge of their staff and their own) and art (usually described as - well - decision-making based on accumulated wisdom and experience). This time the mixture involves more art than usual.