CHRONOLOGY-Federal Reserve's transparency steps

By Ann Saphir Dec 14 (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve has deployed a range of unorthodox tools to spur recovery from the worst recession in decades and in doing so has also made commitments about how long it plans to use them. In December, it took the novel step of indicating it will keep benchmark U.S. interest rates low not just for a specific period, as it has since August 2011, but until unemployment falls at least to 6.5 percent, unless inflation threatens to rise above 2.5 percent.