Same for politicians, 4/5 years matter, if the world collapses after, it's the next governments problem.

And in financial terms, those are really long periods, at least compared to HFT.

> the feeling that the federal reserve is here for the wealthy

In a sense, the disconnect between these two things is also the explanation. The behavior of consumers is not directly coupled to the fed rate. What you or I do with our money won't change if the rate goes up or down a percent, because we just don't have enough money for it to make a difference to our daily life.

But it often takes a loan to start a business. And when the bank is considering who to make loans to, higher fed rates mean they need to charge more interest, which means riskier business proposals don't get funded. Conversely, if the fed rate is low, then the only way for banks to make money is by making loans, so there's more money available, which tends to both increase inflation and decrease unemployment.

The fed has two jobs (keep inflation at ~2%, and unemployment no higher than 5%) and one lever to accomplish both. It's not so much that they only care about the wealthy, but rather that their only tool needs to percolate through the wealthy before it affects us.

If X dollars buys 1.2 times more stuff in the future (deflation) you will hoard your dollars and deprive the economy of them.

If X dollars buys 0.8 times more stuff in the future (inflation) you will buy things now and make investments.

The Fed isn't optimizing for people wanting mortgages today, it does controlled burns to try and prevent medium-term calamity. Look up the Volker shock, where rates were hiked beyond 20% to trigger recessions because inflation was above 10%.