Word: volckerism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...just such evidence of economic strength that two weeks ago led Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to push up interest rates to new highs and announce new measures to curb the inflationary growth of the nation's money sup ply. But the money stock actually expanded by $2.8 billion in the first week after the "Volcker Package" was announced, and the Fed immediately began tightening credit and forcing up interest rates still further. This drove the Dow Jones index of industrial stocks down an extra 24 points last week, renewing memories of the Great Crash that occurred 50 years...
After the upheavals caused by Volcker's monetary policy moves, the international commodity and money markets last week were enjoying rare refreshing quiet; the dollar held its own in Europe and rose dramatically against the yen in Japan. At the same time, gold slipped moderately to end the week...
...Chairman Volcker remains a man on the spot. Lane Kirkland, George Meany's apparent successor as president of the AFL-CIO, has already condemned the Fed's big rate boost as the "wrong move at the wrong time." Economist John Kenneth Galbraith labeled the Federal Reserve's program "an incredibly dubious policy" that will cause a steeper decline but help very little in slowing inflation...
...conservation, either directly by legislated requirements for Detroit or indirectly by an exorbitant gas tax that would force car-makers to produce more efficient autos. There would be inevitable problems to work out, but the public would see a concrete step against inflation much more comprehensible and palatable than Volcker's fiddling...
...should people understand that inflation and oil prices are bound up when their top economic officials and their media economists, like Newsweek's Friedman, tell them they aren't? Volcker's path leads to economic chaos, not because economists don't understand how it will work, but because it ignores principles even non-economists can understand...