The Fed eased its grip on the money supply.

The Federal Reserve’s policy-making group, the Federal Open Market Committee, decided at the end of last year to further ease its grip on the nation’s money supply, linking its decision to sluggish economic growth, according to minutes of the meeting released Friday. The action continued an aggressive policy the nation’s central bank has been following since August to ease restraints on monetary growth as a way to push down interest rates. Since September, a wide variety of interest rates have dropped by about 3 percentage points.