If central banks did not do this – i.e. if we kept interest rates too high relative to their real levels – investing would be unattractive, because the cost of borrowing would exceed the return. So the economy would stay stuck in recession.
8  Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa (1995), “La sicurezza monetaria e le banche centrali”, talk given at the Centro Alti Studi Difesa in Rome on 9 June 1995, published in the series Banca d’Italia – Documenti, 489, 9. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3