Word: volckerism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...VOLCKER ASSERTS U.S. MUST TRIM LIVING STANDARD --New York Times, October...
...Paul A. Volcker, the cigar-chomping chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, sent America off on its latest economic wilderness adventure by announcing two weeks ago an anti-inflation program that did not just raise the discount rate--the Fed's interest rate on money it lends to member banks--but changed the very nature of how the Fed controls the money supply. Instead of trying to curtail the boom in credit by manipulating interest rates, Volcker announced, the Fed would henceforth apply direct controls to the money supply, raising member banks' reserve requirements and using other methods to keep...
...world jumped, in different directions. International financiers praised Volcker's move; after all, he announced the policy immediately after returning from an International Monetary Fund conference in Belgrade, where those same financiers had most likely given him a pep talk for such a program. Stock market investors ran scared, seeing only the deepening recession Volcker's plan would induce. Liberal politicians didn't like this talk of lowering the standard of living for the sake of such unromantic concepts as "managing the money aggregates." Bankers, who had always looked to the Fed as a bellwether for interest rates, were...
MURRAY WEIDENBAUM: "I really don't have any criticism of Volcker's approach," says this visiting scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "The Fed, by and large, is the economic bastion of strength and savvy in Washington." Up to now, he says, the Federal Reserve has been following a policy of "expensive easy credit," meaning high interest rates, but free availability of funds; direct control of the money supply, he asserts, is preferable. But Weidenbaum cautions that there is "no guarantee" the new policy can bring down inflation, while in his mind it produces "more certainty...
JOSEPH PECHMAN: "Volcker is headed in the right direction," says the director of economic studies at Brookings. But Pechman fears the move will increase chances that the recession will be longer and deeper than expected. He says that "unemployment will hit 8% sooner than expected" and might go even higher. To curb inflation without pressing down too hard on the economy, Pechman wishes that the Carter Administration would institute a more vigorous wage-price policy to supplement the Federal Reserve moves. Says he: "We ought to try, somehow, to have business and labor moderate their price and wage demands...