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Paul Volcker, Former Fed Chairman Who Fought Inflation With 20% Interest Rate, Dead at 92

The economist’s most notable achievement was shattering the drastically high inflation period of the 1970s as chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve and a key figure in U.S. economic policy over five decades, has died at age 92. Following a career on Wall Street, he was appointed by the Nixon administration in 1969 as a Treasury adviser on international monetary affairs and later convinced President Richard Nixon to take the U.S. dollar off the gold standard. President Jimmy Carter nominated Volcker to be the Fed chairman in 1979 and he went on to fight the drastically high inflation period with interest rates as high as 20 percent.

Volcker also served as chairman of President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which was established in response to the 2008 financial crisis. His proposal to restrict big banks from using customers’ money to invest in financial markets was dubbed by Obama as the “Volcker Rule.” He died of complications from prostate cancer on Sunday, his daughter said.