GeneralLast Updated on 2 months by General
Paul Volcker Biography
Paul Volcker born as Paul Adolph Volcker Jr is an American economist. He previosly worked as a Chairman of the Federal Reserve under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan from August 1979 to August 1987.
He is widely accredited with ending the high levels of inflation seen in the United States during the 1970s and early 1980s. He was also the chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board under President Barack Obama from February 2009 until January 2011.
Paul Volcker Age
Paul Volcker died on December 8, 2019, at the age of 92. So, he would be 96 years old as of today, September, 2023.
Paul Volcker Height |How Tall Is Paul Volcker
Volcker stands at a height of 6 feet 7 inches (2.01m). He is exactly a ffot (30cm) taller than his first wife, Barbara when they first met.
Paul Volcker Family
Volcker was born in Cape May, New Jersey on September 5, 1927. He is the son of Alma Louise (née Klippel) and Paul Adolph Volcker. His grandparents were all German immigrants. Volcker was brought up in Teaneck, New Jersey, where his father was the township’s first municipal manager. Paul Sr. father to Volcker thrived in the role for 20 years as he improved the burgeoning town’s economic stability and the local government’s effectiveness. He has three younger siblings: Ruth, Louise, and Virginia. When he was a child, he attended his mother’s Lutheran church, while his father went to an Episcopal church.
He had a younger sister who died young, and two of his three older sisters, Louise and Ruth, never married. His older sister known as Virginia, was married to and divorced from Harold Streitfeld; they have five children.
Paul Volcker Education
In 1945 Volcker graduated from Teaneck High School, but not before he participated in several student groups and impressed his peers and teachers with his knowledge of politics.
His undergraduate education was at Princeton University; In 1949 he graduated summa cum laude from the policy-oriented Woodrow Wilson School. During his senior thesis, Volcker criticized the Federal Reserve’s post-WWII policies for failing to curb inflationary pressures. Following a summer as a research assistant at the New York Fed, Volker moved to Harvard University to earn an M.A. in political economy from its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Graduate School of Public Administration.
In his second summer he worked as a New York Fed research assistant before graduating in 1951. After graduating from Harvard He attended the London School of Economics from 1951 to 1952 as a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Fellow under Rotary’s Ambassadorial Scholarships program.
Paul Volcker Wife | Paul Volcker Children
On September 11, 1954 Volcker married Barbara Bahnson, the daughter of a physician. The two had two children, Janice, a nurse and a Georgetown University graduate, and James, a research assistant and a New York University graduate who was born with cerebral palsy, as well as four grandchildren.
Volcker is an avid fly-fisherman, who narrated in 1987, “The greatest strategic error of my adult life was to take my wife to Maine on our honeymoon on a fly-fishing trip.”
His wife Barbara died on June 14, 1998, having suffered from lifelong diabetes, as well as rheumatoid arthritis. During thanksgiving in 2009, he became engaged to Anke Dening, a long-time assistant. The two married in February 2010.
Paul Volcker Inflation
In United States Inflation emerged as an economic and political challenge during 1970s. The monetary policies of the Federal Reserve board which was led by Volcker, were widely credited with controlling the rate of inflation and expectations that inflation would continue. US inflation in March 1980, peaked at 14.8 percent , it fell below 3 percent by 1983. Led by Volcker the Federal Reserve board led raised the federal funds rate, which had averaged 11.2% in 1979, to a peak of 20% in June 1981.
The prime rate in 1981 rose to 21.5% as well, which helped lead to the 1980–1982 recession, in which the national unemployment rate rose to over 10%. Federal Reserve board led by Volcker elicited the strongest political attacks and most widespread protests in the history of the Federal Reserve unlike any protests experienced since 1922, due to the effects of high interest rates on the construction, farming, and industrial sectors, culminating in indebted farmers driving their tractors onto C Street NW in Washington, D.C. and blockading the Eccles Building. In 1982 this is when US monetary policy eased, helping lead to a resumption of economic growth.
Paul Volcker Books
- Keeping At It: The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government
- Changing Fortunes
Paul Volcker photo
Paul Volcker Net Worth
Volcker has a net worth of $1.5 million.
Paul Volcker Economist
Volcker joined the staff of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as a full-time economist in 1952. In 1957he left that position to become a financial economist with the Chase Manhattan Bank. Robert Roosa, who had been his mentor at the Federal Reserve, hired him at the Treasury Department as director of financial analysis in 1962 .Volcker became deputy under secretary for monetary affairs in 1963. In 1965 he returned to Chase Manhattan Bank as vice president and director of planning.
Volcker was appointed by the Nixon Administration. He served as under secretary of the Treasury for international monetary affairs from 1969 to 1974. Volcker played an important role in President Nixon’s decision to suspend gold convertibility of the dollar on August 15, 1971, which resulted in the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. Volcker considers the suspension of gold convertibility “the single most important event of his career.”
Volcker served as a board member for OPIC and Fannie Mae due his position as under secretary. Volcker acted as a moderating influence on policy across the policies he worked on, advocating the pursuit of an international solution to monetary problems and acting as a negotiator with other nations’ policymakers. When he left the U.S. Treasury, he spent a year as a senior fellow at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School (his alma mater). He became president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 1975, and he retained that role until he become Federal Reserve Chair in August 1979.
Paul Volcker Fed |Paul Volcker Federal Reserve
On July 25, 1979 president Jimmy Carter nominated Paul Volcker to serve as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. On August 2, 1979 he was confirmed by the Senate , and took office on August 6, 1979. In 1983 president Ronald Reagan renominated Volcker to a second term.
Paul Volcker Rule
The Volcker Rule refers to § 619 of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (12 U.S.C. § 1851). The rule was originally proposed by Volker American economist and former United States Federal Reserve Chairman to restrict United States banks from making certain kinds of speculative investments that do not benefit their customers. Volcker stated that such speculative activity played a key role in the financial crisis of 2007–2008. The rule is often referred to as a ban on proprietary trading by commercial banks, whereby deposits are used to trade on the bank’s own accounts, although a number of exceptions to this ban were included in the Dodd-Frank law.
On July 21, 2010, this is when the rule’s provisions were scheduled to be implemented as part of the Dodd-Frank Act with preceding ramifications, but were delayed. The necessary agencies approved regulations implementing the rule on December 10, 2013, which were scheduled to go into effect April 1, 2014.
After a lawsuit by community banks over provisions concerning specialized securities on January 14, 2014 , revised final regulations were adopted. On July 21, 2015 this is when the rule came into effect . Several large banks on August 11, 2016 requested a 5-year delay to exit illiquid investments.
Paul Volcker 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.
- What’s the subject of life – to get rich? All of those fellows out there getting rich could be dancing around the real subject of life.
- 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.
- 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.
- I am suspicious of the idea of a new paradigm, to use that word, an entirely new structure of the economy.
- By the time I became chairman and there was more of a feeling of urgency, there was a willingness to accept more forceful measures to try to deal with the inflation.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/paul_a_volcker
Paul Volcker Religion
When he was a child, he attended his mother’s Lutheran church, while his father went to an Episcopal church.