Instead, to balance the chances that inflation will sometimes deviate a bit above and a bit below the goal, 2 percent must be treated as a central tendency around which inflation fluctuates. The same holds true for fluctuations of unemployment around its longer-run normal rate.
Higher interest rates and tighter financial conditions can, indeed, expose households' vulnerabilities that were built up during the period of low interest rates. The reason why central banks in all the world's main economic regions started to raise their key interest rates almost in unison was not, however, motivated by aim of "finding out" households, or somehow punishing economic players.