Former Fed chief Paul Volcker, inflation tamer, dead at 92
Paul Volcker, the towering former Federal Reserve chairman who tamed US inflation in the 1980s and decades later inspired tough Wall Street reforms in the wake of the global financial crisis, died on Monday at the age of 92, according to the New York Times, which quoted his daughter.
Volcker, who media reports said had been suffering from prostate cancer, was the first to bring celebrity status to the job of US central banker, serving as chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1987. As with the man who succeeded him, Alan Greenspan, Volcker could soothe or excite financial markets with just a vague murmur.
In 2018 he published a memoir, Keeping at It: The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government, and expressed concern about the direction of the federal government and the loss of respect for it.
“The central issue is we’re developing into a plutocracy,” he told the New York Times in October 2018. “We’ve got an enormous number of enormously rich people that have convinced themselves that they’re rich because they’re smart and constructive. And they don’t like government and they don’t like to pay taxes.”
In 2009, Volcker began serving as a key financial adviser to President Barack Obama and faced a maelstrom of financial turmoil, government bailouts and fallout from the deepest recession since the 1930s Great Depression.
In working to help the US economy recover from the 2008 crisis, he proposed what became known as the Volcker rule that restricted banks from making high-risk investments with depositors’ cash. Since Donald
Trump, who favors fewer regulations, became president in 2017, the rule has been under review.
Volcker stood 6-foot-8 (2.03 m.), smoked cheap cigars, wore old suits and spoke with a rumbling baritone, creating a mystique that intimidated congressmen and even presidents.