Paul Volcker, Market Psychologist

Another hot inflation reading this week underscores the importance of the US Federal Reserve’s campaign to tame decades-high increases in consumer prices, with many market observers evoking the memory of a similar effort by the central bank’s larger-than-life former chairman, Paul Volcker. 

One key to Volcker’s success in the 1980s, achieved through interest-rate hikes and control of the money supply, was setting the appropriate expectations in the financial markets, according to Christine Harper, editor of Bloomberg Markets magazine and co-author of Volcker’s memoirs, Keeping at It: The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government. Harper joined the latest episode of What Goes Up to discuss her experience with Volcker, and what lessons learned from his time as Fed chief are useful today.   

“Psychology was really important,” she said. “He really understood the psychology of investors, the psychology of consumers and business people. And so much of what he did, and the inflation fight, was basically around changing the psychology.”

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