On Sun, Nov 9, 2008 at 7:00 PM, Patrick Bond <pbond at mail.ngo.za> wrote:
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>>
>> Volcker wasn't really about dereg - he was about breaking inflation.
>
> 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.
>
>
>
>
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>
-- peace,
boddi
http://financialroadtosocialism.blogspot.com/