[scottLobster]

Raising rates kills relatively inefficient, unproductive jobs, as it's harder to get a loan. So a business needs to be more profitable to survive in a higher-rate environment, to pay down the interest.

Now when the economy is in a crisis, sometimes you want those inefficient, unproductive jobs just to throw anything at the wall and see what sticks to stimulate the economy. That's when you lower rates.

The issue is we've lowered rates to near zero and held them there for so long the economy has gotten addicted to them, so now when the next crisis comes we have nowhere to go. If you think the working man will suffer from raising interest rates now, I think you'd be horrified by the experiment where we keep rates at zero and then a legit crisis comes along, and there's just nothing the fed can do but let market forces play out. That's one way to get great depression part II.

Plus super low rates has other knock on effects. Savings accounts become essentially worthless in the face of even mild inflation, so people speculate/gamble more in the markets. Also the super low interest rates exacerbated the housing shortage by making it profitable, for the first time in history, for financial firms to invest in single family homes en-masse.

I'd say trimming the unproductive jobs from the economy now, and the subsequent relatively mild unemployment it will produce, is the lesser of two evils choice. Interest rates are an incredibly blunt instrument, raise or lower someone always gets hurt.