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You're kinda both right.
(re: doppelgangmember) Interest rates are a pretty shit way to protect consumers.
(re: BraveSirZaphor) But inflation is influenced by them nonetheless. And raising them definitely helped with inflation. And they should've raised them way earlier, and probably not even dropped them so drastically in the first place -- debt-fueled nonsense was already a feeding frenzy before COVID. Also you were kind of a jerk in your reply.
My own thoughts here: High prices are only half of the equation. The other half is low wages. Wages are finally coming back up, but they're still far, far behind. And high interest rates can hurt consumers just as much as low interest rates do. When debt is cheap, large firms can speculate like crazy. When debt is expensive, cash on hand is more powerful.
As a result, if you don't already own capital assets, you're pretty much screwed either way. Both at the micro and macro level. Cuz you're missing out on opportunities, and meanwhile the winners are gaining a bigger percentage of the market so their monopoly power grows and grows.
So yeah, pretty much any action the fed takes could reasonably be met with a scoff when they say it's "to protect consumers".
If you picture the fed as a shepherd, consumers as the sheep, and megafirms as the wolves, then lowering interest rates is kinda like breeding tons of sheep. The sheep do great for a moment, but they become a rich food source for the wolves, which overshadows the sheep's growth. Then they raise interest rates, which is like slathering the sheep in poison. It harms the wolves, sure, but it's not good for the sheep either.
Once upon a time, the government built fences to keep the wolves out. But then farmer Reagan told us that fences were bad for the sheep and everything would be fine if we just let nature take its course. What big teeth he had.