The central bank has brought rates down close to zero, facing financial crisis and economic decline, and announced this policy to be in place for some time.

Now the Fed is focused on pouring liquidity into specific credit channels. And as the new era has been disconcerting and confusing for investors conditioned on monetary policy through tiny adjustments to target interest rates the Fed has created a new Web page to explain its response to the financial crisis to investors. This new policy is called by the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke "credit easing".

One of the ways to estimate the extraordinary credit extended to the market is by the growth in the Fed's balance sheet, which has grown by more than $1 trillion since December 2007.

Last week, Bernanke said that the goal is to be as transparent as possible to ensure the Federal Reserve is accountable to the Congress and the public and well understood by the markets and the pubic. Thus many of the board's policies are likely to be more effective in this case.

Links to explain the Fed's balance sheet and all of the new liquidity and credit facilities as well as risk-management tools and information on collateral that the Fed is receiving for its loans are provided on the site.