Thursday, March 28, 2024

17 Paul Volcker
Chair of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board - US Government

Volcker, the giant who defeated inflation is back

Paul Volcker (born September 5, 1927) was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve under United States Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan (from August 1979 to August 1987). He is currently chairman of the newly formed Economic Recovery Advisory Board under President Barack Obama. He has been commissioned by the White House to re-write the architecture of Wall Street, particularly the Glass-Steagall provisions. The White House's urge to make this re-arrangement has been influenced by an urge to echo aspects of the Roosevelt era in what are imagined to be similar economic conditions.

He may be immortalised as the Fed chairman who finally implemented the Chicago school's monetarist prescriptions to defeat inflation in the United States in the early 1980s, an achievement that spread throughout the world and ushered in a quarter of a century-long boom. Now Volcker is back, at the behest of President Obama, this time to advise on prescriptions to reform Wall Street and the US banking system, but perhaps with less success than in his first coming.