[Moonman62]

I could see them raising them to the 3 area, but 5.25 was too high. The economy doesn’t cause inflation and didn’t need to be slowed.

[JasonC]

The housing market was out of control and gold had already doubled. They should have tightened a year or two sooner, and there was nothing whatever wrong with the top rate reached. Frankly, we got off very easy in that respect - it might easily have taken 8% or more to break real estate speculation. As it is, the level was low and the stay brief. Nobody who paid or lent on the nosebleed prices for housing can blame anybody but themselves. They were transparently insane for two years running.