Paul Volcker famous quotes

04-17-2025

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.
-- Paul Volcker

#Unique #Gold #Boards
The standard of living of the average American has to decline.
-- Paul Volcker

#Average #Standards #Decline
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..
-- Paul Volcker

#Business #Real #Dancing
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...
-- Paul Volcker

#Government #Swings #Important
It was probably a mistake to allow gold to rise so high.
-- Paul Volcker

#Mistake #Gold #Investing
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.
-- Paul Volcker

#People #Benefits #Facts
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.
-- Paul Volcker

#Moving #Communication #Differences
I am suspicious of the idea of a new paradigm, to use that word, an entirely new structure of the economy.
-- Paul Volcker

#Ideas #Use #Economy
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.
-- Paul Volcker

#Business #Thinking #May
It was the biggest inflation and the most sustained inflation that the United States had ever had.
-- Paul Volcker

#America #United States #Inflation
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.
-- Paul Volcker

#Double Standard #Feds #Terrible
A global economy requires a global currency.
-- Paul Volcker

#Historical #Economy #Currency
When I hear complaints about less liquidity, remember there is such a thing as too much liquidity.
-- Paul Volcker

#Too Much #Remember #Complaints
I wish someone would give me one shred of neutral evidence that financial innovation has led to economic growth â€” one shred of evidence.
-- Paul Volcker

#Giving #Innovation #Growth
If, at the end of the day, we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes.
-- Paul Volcker

#The End Of The Day #Needs #Should
The only thing useful banks have invented in 20 years is the ATM.
-- Paul Volcker

#Years #Atm
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.
-- Paul Volcker

#Mistake #Gold #Would Be

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