Bernanke Press Conference LIVE: Key Takeaways.

Key takeaways:

- The committee sees the economy continuing to grow at a moderate pace.

- The downside risks to the market have diminished since the fall. 

- 6.5% unemployment will be the threshold for future rate increases, and tapering of bond purchases and mortgage-backed securities will begin at around 7% unemployment. Those are indicators, but not triggers. Those would mean a slowing of the buying of these financial instruments, not a shrinking of the Fed portfolio.

- Inflation has been running bellow the committee 2% goal for some time, but will move back towards 2% in the long term. 

- Unemployment estimated at 5.8 in final quarter of 2015.

- Fed will provide information on unwinding purchases at appropriate time. 

- Strong majority of committee feels Fed should not sell MBS holdings during normalization.