Paul Volcker Quotes

It is a sobering fact that the prominence of central banks in this century has coincided with a general tendency towards more inflation, not less. [I]f the overriding objective is price stability, we did better with the nineteenth-century gold standard and passive central banks, with currency boards, or even with 'free banking.' The truly unique power of a central bank, after all, is the power to create money, and ultimately the power to create is the power to destroy.

The only thing useful banks have invented in 20 years is the ATM.

The idea that when people see prices falling they will stop buying those cheaper goods or cheaper food does not make much sense. And aiming for 2 percent inflation every year means that after a decade prices are more than 25 percent higher and the price level doubles every generation. That is not price stability, yet they call it price stability. I just do not understand central banks wanting a little inflation.

The standard of living of the average American has to decline.

I wish someone would give me one shred of neutral evidence that financial innovation has led to economic growth — one shred of evidence.

It was probably a mistake to allow gold to rise so high.

When I hear complaints about less liquidity, remember there is such a thing as too much liquidity.

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.

A nation's exchange rate is the single most important price in its economy; it will influence the entire range of individual prices, imports and exports, and even the level of economic activity. So it is hard for any government to ignore large swings in its exchange rate.

A global economy requires a global currency.

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.

It's a whole different attitude toward public service than it once was. I tell you, we can all sit around in our old age and moan about it, but I think the administrative processes and the management effectiveness of the federal government are terrible!

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.

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

If, at the end of the day, we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes.

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.

That day the U.S. announced that the dollar would be devalued by 10 percent. By switching the yen to a floating exchange rate, the Japanese currency appreciated, and a sufficient realignment in exchange rates was realized. Joint intervention in gold sales to prevent a steep rise in the price of gold, however, was not undertaken. That was a mistake.

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.