Posted on 02/16/2010 9:59:39 AM PST by the invisib1e hand
Aired February 14, 2010...
FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria. On the show today, a rare interview with the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker. He's, of course, currently a key adviser to President Obama.
But he earned his place in history for something he did almost three decades ago. Paul Volcker killed inflation.
You will remember that in the 1970s, the United States was experiencing uncontrolled inflation, higher than at any time in its modern history. Savings were being wiped out. Wages were escalating every month.
Then, in 1979, Paul Volcker was appointed chairman of the Fed. And he began to raise interest rates to crush inflation. It succeeded. And it actually had a follow-on effect around the world, ushering in an era of low inflation, low interest rates and strong growth.
What impresses me most about Volcker was his willingness to do something that was deeply unpopular in the short term for the long- term good of the country. Today what he did is widely praised, but at the time, he was burned in effigy as a job destroyer.
Now, if you think about almost every problem we face in the United States -- and, in fact, in Europe, Japan and just about every advanced industrial country -- the solutions are readily identifiable.
[More at link.]
(Excerpt) Read more at transcripts.cnn.com ...
Especially to China, regarding whom it was recently asked, What if we pull a Volcker?
How Volcker "killed inflation," circa 1980.
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