While some of us have managed to go back to our pre-bust ways of eating gold-dusted diamonds and speculating on real estate, the Federal Reserve said today that the overall economic recovery hasn’t moved as swiftly as it had previously expected.

In the immortal words of Milli Vannilli, the Fed says you can blame it on the rain… and earthquakes, and tsunamis and other disasters.

“The slower pace of recovery reflects in part factors that are likely to be temporary, including the damping effect of higher food and energy prices on consumer purchasing power and spending as well as supply-chain disruptions associated with the tragic events in Japan,” writes the bank in a statement.

As such, the Fed says it intends to keep interest rates low for the foreseeable future.

The bank backtracked slightly on earlier statements about a gradually improving job market, saying it is actually “weaker than anticipated.”

Fed downgrades economic assessment, sees pickup [Reuters]

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