Paul Volcker, the towering former Federal Reserve chairman who tamed U.S. inflation in the 1980s and decades later inspired tough Wall Street reforms in the wake of the global financial crisis, died Monday at the age of 92, according to his daughter, Janice Zima.
Volcker, who Zima said had been suffering from prostate cancer, was the first to bring celebrity status to the job of U.S. central banker, serving as chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1987. As with the man who succeeded him, Alan Greenspan, Volcker could soothe or excite financial markets with just a vague murmur.
In 2018, he published a memoir, "Keeping at It: The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government," and expressed concern about the direction of the federal government and the loss of respect for it.