Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) — As Janet Yellen seeks to forge a consensus on a new strategy for communicating the Federal Reserve's intention to keep rates low, she can reach for a six-year-old old tool: the Fed's quarterly forecasts.

Policy makers plan to abandon their promise to hold interest rates near zero at least as long as unemployment remains above 6.5 percent, according to minutes of their January meeting. With the jobless rate dropping to 6.6 percent and the economy still in need of support from the Fed, the strategy is nearly obsolete.

Now, the challenge for the policy-making Federal Open Market Committee is to move away from the unemployment threshold of 6.5 percent without raising expectations of an increase in the short-term interest rate. One option policy makers discussed last month is to rely instead on their forecasts for inflation, unemployment, growth and the benchmark interest rate — known as the Summary of Economic Projections — as a way to signal their policy intentions.