The Federal Reserve eased monetary policy on Wednesday, and the global economy is safer for it.

No, the Fed didn’t cut interest rates. But monetary policy works through words as well as actions, and Fed officials signaled they would raise rates only two more times this year instead of four.

This wasn’t a shock. Markets had already written off any chance of rates rising that much. But hearing it from the Fed still matters because it proves the central bank means it when it says rate increases aren’t on a preset path. The response in the financial markets said it all: The dollar fell, two-year bond yields dropped, the stock market rose and the price of oil jumped. That represents an easing of financial conditions as important as an actual rate cut.

The Fed hasn’t eliminated the threat of recession by any means. But by showing a willingness to shift plans when that threat arises, the Fed cuts the odds that its own mistakes will be the cause of that recession.

The Fed’s cautious stance is all the more potent because it comes after the world’s other three most important central banks acted similarly. In January, the Bank of Japan cut rates into negative territory. Last month, the People’s Bank of China reduced reserve requirements, freeing banks to lend more. Last week, the European Central Bank cut rates further into negative territory and expanded its bond-buying program.

At first glance, the Fed’s caution doesn’t look justified by either the economy or the markets. Unemployment is 4.9%, around what the Fed considers full employment. Consumer prices excluding food and energy rose 2.3% in the year through February, the fastest pace of core inflation in nearly four years. That’s welcome because inflation (albeit using a different price index) has so persistently fallen short of the Fed’s 2% target. Meanwhile, the violent moves in financial markets have largely subsided. Stocks have clawed back most of this year’s losses with the Dow Jones Industrial Average hitting a 2016 high after the Fed’s announcement Wednesday. Spreads between yields on junk bonds and Treasurys have narrowed.

But this relatively upbeat assessment misses two crucial points. First, in January the Fed wanted to see if the market turmoil reflected changing fundamentals. It did; growth in commodity exporting countries from Canada to Brazil has been set back. The International Monetary Fund expects to downgrade global growth this year. Weaker global growth, said Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen, is a key reason officials now expect the U.S. to grow just 2.2% this year, down from 2.4% in December.

Second, as Ms. Yellen herself noted, markets have stabilized in part because investors expected the Fed to tighten more slowly. The burden was on the Fed to ratify those expectations.

Let’s go back for a moment. In late 2014, the Fed began signaling that the era of unusually easy monetary policy, conducted through bond buying and commitments to keep interest rates near zero, was coming to an end. That policy had encouraged investors to take risks, what traders call “risk on.” So its approaching end logically meant “risk off.” Capital fled emerging markets and junk-rated companies such as shale-oil producers, the dollar rose and stocks stopped rising. Plunging oil prices and doubts about China were certainly drivers of the risk-off shift, but the less-friendly Fed was always in the background.

The Fed signaled Wednesday not only that the path to higher rates would be lower, but so, too, would the resting place. The median of officials’ estimate of the long-run federal funds rate dropped to 3.25%, from 3.5% in December and 4% two years ago. This is not actually encouraging: it means Fed officials think a deep-seated shortage of investment and spending are holding down the demand for loans and thus the “equilibrium” interest rate that keeps the economy at full employment.

Markets had reached the same conclusion long ago; it’s why long-term Treasury yields persist near 2%. Fed officials are coming around to the market’s way of thinking, and in the process making it less likely they will push rates up so far that the economy sinks back into recession.

Risks still abound, from heavily indebted emerging markets to a British vote on whether to leave the European Union and a fractious presidential election in the U.S. Central banks have little ammunition to deal with the shocks to confidence those risks pose. But with its newly supportive posture, the Fed should be part of the solution instead of the problem.