Paul Volcker died today at age 92. A colossus of a man both physically (at 6’7″) and professionally, it sometimes seemed to me his achievements at the Federal Reserve were eclipsed by “maestro” Alan Greenspan who succeeded him in 1987. A full recounting of his career is impossible, of course, and he did much after leaving the Fed, a job he never asked for but served when asked.

In his biography of Greenspan, The Man Who Knew, Sebastian Mallaby notes that Volcker was deeply influenced by a speech in Belgrade in September 1979, weeks after his appointment. Arthur Burns gave the speech, a former Fed chair himself, who claimed that the independence of the Fed was over because monetary experts had too many questions to speak with one voice against political pressures. Mallaby argues that the desire to wring inflation out of the US system, characterized by the Saturday Night Special announcement that Fed policy was being fundamentally changed, was Volcker’s attempt to prove Burns wrong. (As I was writing this, Mallaby has released a version of this point in his retrospective of Volcker today.) Thus began the long disinflation that was the achievement of Volcker’s career.