Imagine if they raised rates by 3% to kill the inflation and speculative bubbles.
That would add $270 billion per year to the Federal deficit just for the increased interest expense.
Additionally, since it would cause a recession, as more people were laidoff/fired/retired it would increase the deficit and debt as they got thrown onto the safety net. For example, when Ford gets rid of 90,000 workers. What do you think happened to them and their families? They didn't ALL go get other jobs. Many or most are just retiring earlier, making do with less. The younger ones are just going back to school to retrain for low paying jobs that may or may not exist. This is well documented. The same thing has happened to the airline employees fired in the wake of 9/11.
Pretty soon we'll ALL be retired collecting checks. But if we are ALL retired, who will be producing the stuff for us to buy on the shelves, and WHY?
I looked at the deficit swing from surplus in 1999 to deficit in 2001, and basically we went from a $200 billion surplus to a $200 billion deficit. I guess we could say $100 billion of that might be 9/11 related, but that leaves a $300 billion increase in deficit attributable to the recession. I'm sure the big negative effect would be from reduced tax revenues as the economy contracted. You'd need to add the $300 billion to the $270 billion increase in interest expense to get to a total, giving a $570 billion INCREASE in defict.
I don't think anyone has bothered to think about the long term effects of all this.