I would not call 6% high - I'd call it normal, maybe even low-normal. 3% was low, and done at a time when stimulating the economy was thought important enough to accept the consequences. However we are not facing the fallout of rates going back up.
Well, literally the point is to stop banks from taking as many loans and force them to keep more deposits at hand to cover withdraws.
But yeah, getting the economy unaddicted to ZIRP is a good side-effect that the US will get if they manage to keep it all the way through the withdraw phase.
> The whole point of high interest rates is to get your economy unaddicted to cheap money and force economic efficiency.
No, the point of high interest rates is to slow inflation; its part of the Fed’s thermostatic response to changes in the employment and inflation landscape.
It’s not an swift radical ideological change from the same Fed board with largely the same members that also implemented low rates not long ago. Its changed external conditions leading to the same kind of response the Fed tends to make to the same kind of condition changes historically.
This is why Trump is so angry about high interest rates and has threatened to fire powell again and again over it.