Free Republic

"President Jimmy Carter strongly supported the Ayatollah regime's takeover of Iran. In 1978, Carter and his advisors concluded that the Persian Shah, America's Gulf policeman, was obsolete, and they believed Ayatollah Khomeini, who was in exile in Paris, would suit the US as he was anti-Communist and anti-Soviet." Ettinger added, "Carter went so far as to declare—ten days before Khomeini landed in Tehran—that US intelligence determined Khomeini would be an Iranian Gandhi. He also claimed Khomeini had no desire to spread the revolution outside Iran, would focus on tractors rather than tanks, and be a loyal envoy for the interests...

ThereÂ’s a sense that the bureaucrats who command the federal leviathan work for themselves, not for the country at large. That wasnÂ’t true of Paul Volcker. Since his death last week, Paul Volcker has been heavily eulogized. ThatÂ’s not the purpose here. In these trying times, AmericansÂ’ faith in our nationÂ’s institutions is at historic lows. Once-vaunted organizations like the FBI now struggle to command a majority of AmericansÂ’ support.The causes for this are legion. But there is a general sense that the vast federal appendages created in the last 100 years have little connection to the interests of...

[Volcker's] obituaries were disappointing for them almost uniformly promoting the fiction of Volcker as inflation slayer. Such a view doesn’t square with simple economic history. Indeed, explicit in the accepted wisdom that Volcker was “inflation’s worst enemy” (Hoover Institution’s John Taylor) is that economic growth causes inflation. As Phillips Curve devotee Neil Irwin put it in the New York Times, Volcker allegedly beat inflation “at the cost of what would become the worst recession in the seven decades between the Great Depression and the global financial crisis.” In the analysis of seemingly everyone, job loss and greatly reduced prosperity were...

Paul A. Volcker, who helped shape American economic policy for more than six decades, most notably by leading the Federal Reserve’s brute-force campaign to subdue inflation in the late 1970s and early ’80s, died on Sunday in New York. He was 92. The death was confirmed by his daughter, Janice Zima, who did not specify the cause. Mr. Volcker had been treated for prostate cancer, which was diagnosed in 2018. Mr. Volcker, a towering, taciturn and somewhat rumpled figure, arrived in Washington as America’s postwar economic hegemony was beginning to crumble. He would devote his professional life to wrestling with...

Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve under Presidents Carter and Reagan who later played a role in the Obama administration's response to the financial crisis of 2009, has died at the age of 92. Multiple media outlets reported that Volcker, who raised interest rates as the Fed's chief to combat inflation, had died. In the Obama years, Volcker reemerged to tout a rule, eventually called the Volcker rule, that put tougher constraints on big banks.

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...