Procedures adopted by the FOMC provide for the public release of transcripts for an entire year with a five-year lag. By contrast, minutes of each meeting are issued a few days after the next regularly scheduled meeting (a lag averaging about six weeks), and a statement pertaining to the Committee's policy decisions is issued shortly after the conclusion of each meeting.

Beginning with the 1994 meetings, the FOMC Secretariat produced the transcripts shortly after each meeting from an audio recording of the proceedings, lightly editing the speakers' original words, where necessary, to facilitate the reader's understanding. Meeting participants were then given an opportunity within the next several weeks to review the transcript for accuracy.

For the meetings preceding 1994, the transcripts were produced from the original, raw transcripts in the FOMC Secretariat's files. These records have also been lightly edited by the Secretariat to facilitate the reader's understanding. In addition, where one or more words were missed or garbled in the transcription, the notation "unintelligible" has been inserted. In some instances, words have been added in brackets to complete a speaker's apparent thought or to correct an obvious transcription error or misstatement.

Nonetheless, for the pre-1994 transcripts, errors undoubtedly remain. The raw transcripts were not fully edited for accuracy at the time they were prepared because they were intended only as an aid to the Secretariat in preparing meeting minutes. The edited pre-1994 transcripts have not been reviewed by present or past members of the Committee.

In all the transcripts, a very small amount of information received on a confidential basis from, or about, foreign officials, businesses, and persons that are identified or identifiable was subject to deletion. All deleted passages, indicated by gaps in the text, are exempt from disclosure under applicable provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.