Both. While he may have put brakes on Glass-Steagall erosion, that whole crew of bank regulators wanted to liberate S&Ls from mere mortgage lending and banks from consumer protection regulation (I was a bank regulator at the Fed in 1981 and 1983-85 and saw this firsthand). I don't think this "Encyclopedia of World Biography on Paul Volcker" is incorrect: "As chairman of the Federal Reserve Board during one of the most turbulent periods in U.S. monetary history, Paul Volcker helped lower double-digit inflation rates in the early 1980s and ushered in an era of financial deregulation and innovation."
> ... And, as Leo Panitch has pointed out to you in our little
> conversations, Volcker wasn't really an ideological neoliberal - he's
> essentially a civil servant. Nor was he really a Wall Streeter - he
> worked for Wolfie for a while, but he never got rich, and his whole
> style is a lot more modest than that of a Goldman Sachs titan.
I trust you (and Leo) on many many points, Doug. On this, though, I trust Stuart Eizenstat (a jerk opposed to apartheid victims' use of the Alien Tort Claims Act for reparations, though he did a deal with German companies and Swiss banks to shake down several billion dollars of reparations for Holocaust victims), explaining why Carter chose him as Fed chair in July 1979: "Volcker was selected because he was the candidate of Wall Street. This was their price, in effect. What was known about him? That he was able and bright. And it was also known that he was conservative. What wasn’t known was that he was going to impose some very dramatic changes." And then post-Fed he got rich working for Wolfie.