The Federal Reserve is doing its part to hold interest rates steady.

The Fed’s Open Market Committee kept its target for the federal funds rate unchanged today, at 2 percent. The prime rate will remain 5 percent. Home equity lines of credit and most variable-rate credit cards are indexed to the prime rate, so their rates will remain unchanged. Long-term interest rates, such as those paid on fixed-rate mortgages, are governed by market forces and don’t necessarily follow the Fed’s lead.

Among economists, the consensus is that the Fed won’t change short-term rates until late this year or early next year — and when that time comes, the central bank will raise rates to combat inflation. In the meantime, the Fed’s preferred inflation-fighting weapon will be “jawboning,” or “trying to talk inflation down instead of doing something about it,” in the wry words of Kenneth Thomas, finance lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

In a statement explaining its interest rate policy, the Fed said tight credit, the slumping housing market and higher fuel prices will weigh on economic growth in the next few quarters. It added: “Inflation has been high, spurred by the earlier increases in the prices of energy and some other commodities, and some indicators of inflation expectations have been elevated.”

Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Fed, cast a dissenting vote. He wanted to raise the federal funds rate.

No one was surprised by the Fed’s decision to keep rates steady. The central bank likes to foreshadow rate changes, and did nothing of the sort over the past few weeks. Fed officials have been in wait-and-see mode for months as the economy has slowed down while, at the same time, prices have risen swiftly.