Volcker to play the heavy, again

Barack Obama calls for big, bold economic ideas, it will fall to former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker to shoot down the unworkable and irresponsible ones. It’s the role of the heavy that Volcker will revive from the Carter and Reagan administrations. Back then, he was chairman of the Federal Reserve, fighting the necessary but politically unpopular fight against the inflation monster. Now, he’s head of Obama’s new economic recovery advisory board, where he’ll lead other policy heavyweights in overseeing Obama’s economic plans. Those who know him and his career say Volcker will be the grownup at that advisory table, and not just because of his accumulated wisdom at 81, he’s more than twice as old as the other member Obama announced Tuesday, Austan Goolsbee but because of his economic thinking and character. Volcker is a giant in the economic world for breaking the back of double digit inflation that gripped the American economy in the late 1970s. At the Fed helm, he made the tough decisions that politicians were unable, or unwilling, to make to get the problem under control. He dramatically tightened monetary policy which drove short-term interest rates as high as 20 percent and stuck to his anti-inflation guns despite backlash from many sides, including from liberals and Democrats in Congress. Volcker’s decisions were not easy ones. His actions touched off the worst recession since the Great Depression.

There were unprecedented protests against the central bank. Fed officials were picketed and received two-by-fours in the mail with notes from workers in the hard-hit housing sector, saying I can’t do anything with these, so you can keep them, Reinhardt said. Volcker also had to withstand criticisms from politicians on Capitol Hill and in the White House under both Democrat Jimmy Carter and Republican Ronald Reagan.

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11/26 3/3 "Experience & Fresh Thinking & Change=Volcker an Ex-Fed Chief??? Recycling of Clinton Admin?