Paul Volcker quotes

Paul Volcker was an American economist who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1987. His leadership helped tame the high inflation that plagued the U.S. economy during the late 1970s and early 1980s. He is remembered as a decisive and influential figure in modern financial policy. Here are 12 of his quotes:

When people begin anticipating inflation, it doesn't do you any good anymore, because any benefit of inflation comes from the fact that you do better than you thought you were going to do.

Paul Volcker

It was the biggest inflation and the most sustained inflation that the United States had ever had.

Paul Volcker

Double-digit inflation is a terrible thing - and it got up to 14 or 15 percent on a monthly basis for a while, shortly after I became chairman of the Fed.

Paul Volcker

The speed of communication, the speed of information transfer, the cheapness of communication, the ease of moving things around the world are a difference in kind as well as degree.

Paul Volcker

Mehrling: So you didn't read at that time the classic banking texts, for example, Bagehot's Lombard Street? Volcker: Well I read some of Bagehot, and I read a lot of Hawtrey. I remember I read a lot of Hawtrey. Mehrling: Currency and Credit? The Art of Central Banking? Volcker: I don't remember the names of the books, just being in London. In those days I used to read The Economist and the Financial Times, so I kept up with what was going on in the money markets.

Paul Volcker

I start from the premise that the underlying pres­sures toward integration and interdependence are growing stronger, not weaker. We cannot reverse or stop the advancing technology that brings us fast and cheap communication and transportation, or the spread of knowledge.

Paul Volcker

The happy days of Bretton Woods, often viewed today with nostalgia, were a special case, workable because of a particular economic and political setting... the inherent contradictions in the system were too great. With the benefit of hindsight, it would seem that an erosion of the United States competitive position was implicit in the postwar arrangements.

Paul Volcker

We live in a world in which individuals and busi­nessmen... they want to do so unencumbered by national boundaries. At the same time, modern democracies, at least as much as other forms of government, long for autonomy; they want to control their own destinies in ways responsive to the needs of an electorate often concerned less with na­tional than with local or sectorial interests. Yet, theory and experience indicate we can't have it both ways, full integration and full autonomy.

Paul Volcker

The American standard of living must decline.

Paul Volcker

Less emphasis on inventories, I think, may tend to dampen business cycles, because business cycles are typically in the grasp of inventory cycles and heavy industry cycles.

Paul Volcker