Volcker arrived in Washington, the national inflation rate was exceeding 1 percent a month. (She died in 1998.) Their son, James, who was born with cerebral palsy, also remained in New York. Volcker’s wife at the time, Barbara Volcker, who struggled for much of her life from debilitating rheumatoid arthritis as well as diabetes, remained in New York to be near her longtime physician. The job of chairman paid half as much as his post at the New York Fed, and Mr. Volcker strained his finances and his family life. Volcker said he told the president, “if you appoint me, I favor a tighter policy than that fellow.” Volcker slumped on a couch, a familiar cigar in hand, and gestured at Mr. Carter’s aides to warn that he might drive the economy into recession. Volcker was known to be frustrated with the Fed’s halfhearted efforts to curb inflation, leading Mr.
Volcker, who was then serving as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, was not Mr. William Miller to serve as Treasury secretary.
Carter, struggling to salvage public confidence in his administration, decided to reshuffle his cabinet, plucking the Fed chairman G. His time in the national spotlight began in August 1979. His first wife told a biographer that she had waited vainly for a proposal before she finally asked him if he wanted to marry. Those who knew him well said the gruff exterior concealed a shy man with a puckish wit. Volcker struck many as remote and intimidating. Proud, confident and 6-foot-7 in socks, Mr. “He personified the idea of doing something politically unpopular but economically necessary.” Bernanke said in an interview for this obituary. Volcker received during the anti-inflation campaign. Bernanke, the Fed’s chairman from 2006 to 2014, kept on his bookshelf one of the chunks of wood that Mr. His victory inaugurated an era in which the leaders of both political parties largely deferred to the central bank, allowing technocrats to chart the course of monetary policy with little political interference.īen S. Volcker managed to wring most inflation from the economy. Angry homebuilders mailed chunks of two-by-fours to the Fed’s marble headquarters in Washington. As consumers stopped buying homes and cars, millions of workers lost their jobs. He prevailed by delivering shock therapy, driving the economy into a deep recession to persuade Americans to abandon their entrenched expectation that prices would keep rising rapidly.
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