Paul A. Volcker Quotations

Well, I started out in the Federal Reserve as a young economist and spent about five years in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Then it got corrupted with a capital C when Saddam figured out how to make money off of it by putting on the surcharges and kickbacks,

Everybody down the line kept very meticulous records because Saddam told them, 'You get the surcharge from everybody,' ... So they all wanted to document how they got the surcharge.

By the time I became chairman and there was more of a feeling of urgency, there was a willingness to accept more forceful measures to try to deal with the inflation.

You could not buy a house in those days without just assuming that the house was not only a place to live, but it was a good investment, because it was going to keep up with inflation or get ahead of inflation, and it was just - that was America.

Well, by the standards of a lot of countries, by Latin American standards, it wasn't so bad.