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Other People’s Blood | Online Only | n+1
In his memoir, Volcker writes, “The real danger comes from encouraging or inadvertently tolerating rising inflation and its close cousin of extreme speculation and risk taking, in effect standing by while bubbles and excesses threaten financial markets.” Statements like this make clear the connection between the scourge of the unions and the critic of the bankers, between the Volcker Shock and the Volcker Rule. Both inflation and bubbles create fictitious money claims in excess of the wealth a society actually possesses, leading to spurious GDP gains that must give way—whether in an inflationary spiral or financial panic. In both cases, temporizing economists, the enemies of practical bankers like Volcker, claim that things can be finely measured and controlled—through fiscal policy and price indexes, hedges and efficient markets—and in both cases pride brings a fall.
Other People’s Blood | Online Only | n+1
Beyond his “rule,” Volcker has been a consistent critic of financialization. He once told an audience of bankers that the only financial innovation that had improved society was the ATM. More seriously, he believes we have done little to prevent another crisis on the scale of 2008. Despite his hostility to certain elements of activist government, Volcker (son of a New Jersey town manager) has always believed in public service: his cheap suits and ten-cent cigars advertised his indifference to the elite culture of the 1980s. He has an uncommon contempt for think tanks, policy institutes, and elite law schools, and he has lately taken to describing his country as a “plutocracy” and admitting that the concerns of industrial workers have been too easily dismissed with vague promises of “job retraining.”