Paul Volcker: The Making of a Financial Legend (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“This new biography of Paul Volcker…. Adds colour and personality to a figure who often came across to the general public as a ‘cold and arrogant numbers cruncher.’” (CFO Europe, July 2004)

It may be hard to remember that the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board can be reviled as well as revered. But witness the tenure of Paul Volcker, Alan Greenspan's predecessor, whose tough economic policies halted the runaway inflation that staggered the American economy in the late 1970's and early 80's. Even so, Volcker's engineering of ever higher interest rates cost millions of Americans their jobs. (Embittered Democrats would include President Jimmy Carter among the victims.) In ''Paul Volcker: The Making of a Financial Legend,'' Joseph B. Treaster, a financial reporter for The New York Times, has written something of a mash note to the retired Fed chairman, a slim biography that lauds Volcker's steadfastness in applying the economic shock therapy that laid the groundwork for the boom years in the 1990's. Treaster offers little in the way of new policy history; William Greider's ''Secrets of the Temple'' (1988) provides a much more comprehensive and skeptical account of Volcker's tenure at the Fed. Where Treaster does break ground is in his personal portrait. Volcker could appear insensitive in public, but Treaster enters into his family life as well; particularly touching is Volcker's relationship with his son, who has cerebral palsy.Treaster's depiction of Volcker's honesty and resilience highlights some attributes that American policy makers should keep in mind as the Greenspan era draws to a close. ALEXANDRA STARR (New York Times Book Review, May 23, 2004)

Product Description

Praise for Paul Volcker
The making of a financial legend

"Paul Volcker may be the most important figure of our time on the U.S. economic scene. In his book, Paul Volcker: The Making of a Financial Legend, Joseph Treaster has captured the man, his time, and his influence with exceptional insight, clarity, and readability. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in the American economy."
--Myron Kandel, CNN Financial Editor

"Only a truly great chairman of the Federal Reserve could stay the course, keep interest rates at an all-time high to lower inflation, and save the economy in the face of near unanimous denunciation and derision. That drumbeat was summed up in a congressman’s shout, ‘Your course of action is wrong. There isn’t anybody who says you’re right.’ That chairman was Paul Volcker. Events, of course, proved Volcker right."
--Ed Koch, former Mayor, New York City and current Partner, Bryan Cave LLP

"Paul Volcker is a true American hero. His courage as a central banker in leading the assault on the Great Inflation of the 1970s was the single most important step on the road to economic renewal in the United States. Treaster’s probing look inside the man reveals a strength of character that made it easy for Volcker to do the toughest job in America."
--Stephen S. Roach, Chief Global Economist, Morgan Stanley

"At a time when a number of business leaders have betrayed the public trust upon which their power, position, and, ultimately, the prosperity of their companies depend, Paul Volcker stands out as a financial leader of unusual competence, unquestionable diligence, and uncompromising integrity. Joseph Treaster has vividly captured the essential greatness of the man in his excellent book."
--David Rockefeller III, former Chairman and CEO of The Chase Manhattan Bank

"Joseph Treaster has written a splendidly useful book that reveals how one courageous banker broke the back of double-digit inflation in America. There are up-to-the-minute lessons here for everyone who wants to learn from history rather than be condemned to repeat it.’’
--Marshall Loeb, columnist for CBS MarketWatch and former Managing Editor of Fortune and Money

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 276 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (April 27, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471428124
• ISBN-13: 978-0471428121
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #697,388 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Paul Volcker: An Honorable Man, August 4, 2004

By	J. Horwitz (New York, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

No need to be a bellowing bond trader nor an obsessive and fetishistic day trader taking your market temperature by the minute to appreciate NY Times journalist Joseph B. Treaster's most readable biography, Paul Volcker: The Making of a Financial Legend.

In our age of cooked corporate books and perp-walking CEOs, Treaster shines an admiring and well-deserved light on the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, a man of towering financial and personal integrity. Words like honor, integrity, truth, steadfastness are thrown around like confetti these days in the political and financial world, but as Fed Chairman from 1979 to 1987, Paul Volcker's strong will and good sense were perhaps the major factors in the survival of the nation's economy through the inflationary tsunami of the Carter years and the financial wrecking ball of Reagonomics.

Standing 6'7", physically ungainly and socially reserved and stand-offish, Volcker had a commanding intellect when it came to bigtime economic and financial matters. Born to public service (his father was longtime town manager of Teaneck, NJ), Volcker attended Princeton, Harvard's Littauer School of Public Administration (it eventually became the JFK School of Government) and the London School of Economics. He was a special assistant to David Rockefeller at Chase Bank, served as an undersecretary in Nixon's Treasury Department, ran the New York Bank of the Federal Reserve and became fed chairman in July 1979 while inflation was rocketing and Pres. Carter was bemoaning the national "malaise".

Chairman Volcker was the man with the plan. He turned old economic theory upside down with his idea to drastically cut the money supply as the country's economy sweated and shuddered through the debilitating national fits of inflation and recession. Politicians and businessmen, fearful and shortsighted as usual, whined and squealed that Volcker was Dr Kevorkian or Dr. Demento, putting a noose around the national economic neck. In fact, as history has shown and Treaster explains so even the ordinary Joe can understand, Volcker had applied the ideal tourniquet to stop the bleeding and the poison. The patient lived and by the mid-90s, the country was economically healthy and prospering as never before.

Of course, like the Lone Ranger, Volcker had ridden off into the sunset by that time. Waved good-bye (and good riddance) by Reagan's Treasury Secretary and the GOP's most artful backroom Machievelli, James A. Baker III in 1987, Volcker turned his enormous economic and monetary talents to the private sector. But this principled and unpretentious public servant with his "unshakeable integrity" was not happy in this work.
These days, as the political swamp gases are once again rising and spreading their bad odor, Volcker, even at the age of 76, is being called on once again to perform his public duty.

In recent years, Volcker has admirably and successfully refereed the "battle royal" between the Holocaust survivors and the Swiss banks with their appalling Nazi connections. When Enron, the King Kong of corporate fraud sunk in its own muck, "Mr Incorruptible" Volcker took the job of chairman of an independent oversight board to try to salvage some shred of integrity for the accounting community, which had been badly tainted by Arthur Anderson, the giant accounting firm that was the handmaiden to Enron's tangled scams and schemes. And at this moment, Volcker is heading up the international investigation of the massive corruption between Saddam Hussein, various corporate greedheads and UN officials in the administration of the decade-long Oil For Food program in Iraq.

After reading this worthy biography of Paul Volcker, one can only hope they did not break the mold when they made this honorable man.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lessons to learn..., May 23, 2004

By	Steve (Illinois) - See all my reviews

This cleverly-constructed biography not only reminds us of Paul Volcker's tough-minded role in taming inflation in the perilous economy of the '80s into the '90s, but it provide potent insights into his personal life--elements that laid the foundation for the clear thinking, determination and honesty that the American economy still benefits from today.

Volcker's city manager/father passed to his son a belief in the worthiness of public service and the need for absolute integrity and perception of integrity. Volcker's public service meant sacrifice for him and his family.

This is not a thick volume (244 pages), but it leaves the reader very satisified that he or she has a clear understanding of what drives Volcker, of the politics that brought him to office and then challenged him, of who he is today. It's no wonder the United Nations has turned to him to help investigate its oil-for-food program in pre-war Iraq.

The fact that so many "heavyweights" (people like David Rockefeller, Marshall Loeb, Bill Bradley, Ed Koch, etc.) were willing to write pre-publication blurbs that spill off the dustcover into the book itself, and that Arthur Levitt wrote the foreword, reflects the respect they have not just for Volcker but for author Joseph Treaster, a business writer for The New York Times.

This book is very readable, well-sourced and documented, and has some delicious photos. As the nation faces the prospect of renewed inflation today, our leaders would do well to read this book and learn its lessons. So would our nation's citizens.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Book Review, May 19, 2004

By	Gerry Bohning, Barry University (Miami, FL) - See all my reviews

I've just finished reading Joseph Treaster's excellent book on Paul Volcker. He has done a superior job of humanizing a stoic economist! I particularly liked the inclusion of his growing up years to show that influence in his decisions later in his career. It is a very readable book for the general public; I thought there was just enough economic theory in it to make Volcker a man of principles, personal and professional. And, I am very glad that I have an autographed copy.