Quotes from Paul A. Volcker

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.

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.

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.

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.

I am suspicious of the idea of a new paradigm, to use that word, an entirely new structure of the economy.

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.

You could not buy a house in those days without just assuming that the house was not only a place to live, but it was a good investment, because it was going to keep up with inflation or get ahead of inflation, and it was just - that was America.

Well, by the standards of a lot of countries, by Latin American standards, it wasn't so bad.

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

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.

Did I realize at the time how high interest rates might go before we could claim success? No. From today's vantage point, was there a better path? Not to my knowledge—not then or now.

Baker delivered a message: "The president is ordering you not to raise interest rates before the election." I was stunned. Not only was the president clearly overstepping his authority by giving an order to the Fed, but also it was disconcerting because I wasn't planning tighter monetary policy at the time.

The 1980s have been described as the "lost decade" for Latin America. My view is different: it was one of lost opportunities.