The Moral World of Paul Volcker
Paul Volcker — one of the most influential figures in American economic policy — died earlier this week at the age of 92. In 2012, he invited Thomas Cole to his Manhattan office to discuss his legacy, his passions, and his thoughts on aging and death.
“This is not the kind of thing you talk about every day,” I say.
“This is the kind of thing I think about every day.”
So begins my conversation with 85-year-old Paul Volcker, the man who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve under Presidents Carter and Reagan and later as Chairman of President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Volcker sits behind a large granite desk in his office at the historic Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, his 6-foot, 8-inch frame genially slumped against the back of his chair. Thirty-five years ago, when the conservative and immovable Volcker took highly controversial measures to bring down soaring inflation, he was the most powerful financial official in the world. Now he’s rereading my book prospectus.
As we sit in his New York City office, I want Volcker to discuss those “things” he thinks about every day but rarely discusses: love and work life,sexuality, hopes and fears, high and low points, and regrets.
“What do you love?” I ask.
What do I love? I don’t know. I love being involved in things because I can see old men not so involved in anything — you don’t have the same incentive, the same discipline — and from one point of view that’s fine, and some people want to go Florida and play golf. I’m not a golfer so I don’t want to play golf, and even if I played golf I wouldn’t want to get absorbed in it. I’m too old to get that absorbed in fishing, which used to be my preoccupation. But you want to feel needed — that’s what you want to feel, needed.
Some people want to go Florida and play golf. I’m not a golfer so I don’t want to play golf…. I’m too old to get that absorbed in fishing, which used to be my preoccupation. But you want to feel needed — that’s what you want to feel, needed.
Volcker doesn’t feel needed when he is merely asked to lend his name or to attend a social function. “People come around, we need you for this, that and the other thing — a charity or whatever, sign this petition or whatever, or come to this meeting — and from that standpoint a lot of people come around,” he says. He is used to being honored at big dinners where some foundation will sell expensive tables and bring in inspirational speakers to raise money for its cause. “But feeling needed because you’re making a difference to something that’s important is a little different story.”
“The Volcker Rule is a pretty important thing,” I say. He nods. “That’s the last thing that I got involved with, because I was already somewhat involved in financial reform and at that point I had access to the President. Then I could get engaged and I was in charge.”
“What does it mean in general to be needed?” I ask.
“There’s a meaning to your life, I guess.” Volcker hesitates. “It’s a kind of selfish thing to say you want to be needed.”
“No, everybody says that — everybody needs to be needed,” I say. “I believe that.”
“I’m sure you do, but it is kind of a selfish thought. Why do you think people think it’s important that you be needed? Go home, go to sleep. You’re dead, you’re out of it, you’re . . . we don’t need you.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“You may feel that you want to be needed,” he says, “but the people in charge don’t need you, they — I mean, people that need you are the people that are unhappy with something. So, you will start this new thing, but if you’re a government official you don’t want me — you don’t want this old guy around.”
In some ways, Volcker embodies an older, patrician vision of manhood — a moral code that takes male dominance for granted and at the same time values community and character. Even as he worries about the future of “mankind,” Volcker inhabits his current patriarchal role comfortably, without question. I wonder what Volcker is afraid of. “Are you afraid of death?” I ask.
Not particularly. Not at this stage, anyway — my sister just died a year or so ago and she was a little bit older than I was, and she was quite active. She was 85, and she got cancer and went down pretty fast, in a year or so. It was interesting. She didn’t want to go through the agony of cancer treatment. She thought: “I don’t care whether I live 2 more years. When my time has come, it’s come.”
“I don’t know,” Volcker continues,
I hope I feel that way at some point when I get really sick. I don’t sit around worrying about dying. You do wonder whether you’re going to get a heart attack or something once in a while, like in my case you get a stroke — my father died from a stroke. It’s crazy. I thought he was an old man — he was 70. You don’t think of a 70- year- old being an old man anymore. My mother was 68 when my father died. She lived another 30 years.
Volcker embodies an older, patrician vision of manhood — a moral code that takes male dominance for granted and at the same time values community and character.
When Volcker retired from the Federal Reserve, he thought he’d find a short-term job and retire in a few years. It was not an easy time.
I was 60. I had no money, I had a sick wife, I had a handicapped son, I had a daughter who is self- sufficient, but she was a nurse at that point — she wasn’t going to be rich. I said okay, I’m 60, I came out of a prominent position and obviously I can get a job someplace, I’ve got 5 years to make some money because
people retire at 65. When 5 years were up I got so goddam busy I couldn’t keep up with it.
Now he’s sitting here, 25 years later, still at work. I mention to Volcker that he didn’t tell me what he’s afraid of.
I’m afraid of not being able to hear. I’m afraid of having a stroke like my father. And everybody’s afraid of Alzheimer’s. I got a real problem — I can’t remember people’s names anymore. I was never good at remembering people’s names, but now it’s really bad.
It’s almost 3 o’clock. Anke, Volcker’s longtime administrator, executive secretary, and constant companion — now his wife — opens the door and signals that it’s time for Volcker’s next appointment. Paul Volcker is not a man given to speculation or introspection or personal revelation, certainly not with strangers or interviewers. Anke’s appearance snaps him back to his public persona.
“Why am I talking to you like this? You’re insidious!”
“I’m a good listener,” I say, turning off the recorder.
Thomas R. Cole is the McGovern Chair and Director of the McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics at University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. His work has been featured in The New York Times, NPR, and PBS. Cole has served as an advisor to the President’s Council on Bioethics and the United Nations NGO Committee on Ageing. His book The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He is Senior Editor of The Oxford Book of Aging, which the New Yorker cited as one of the most memorable books of the year. Cole’s book No Color Is My Kind: the Life of Eldrewey Stearns and the Desegregation of Houston (1997) was adapted into the film, The Strange Demise of Jim Crow, which was broadcast nationally on over 60 PBS stations. In 2007, he co-produced Stroke: Conversations and Explanations, a prize-winning film about the invisible world of stroke survivors.
