2020年经济学人 前美联储主席保罗·沃尔克(1)（在线收听）

Paul Volcker, chairman of the Fed and America's doughtiest inflation-fighter, died on December 8th, aged 92

保罗·沃尔克是美联储主席和美国最勇猛的通货膨胀斗士，他于12月8日去世，享年92岁。

In his spells of leisure time, when he had any, Paul Volcker liked to go fishing. Towering above a river in his jerkin and waders, fly cast, cigar firmly in mouth, was a good way to ruminate on big decisions. And he believed in rumination. "Procrastinate and flourish" was a favourite motto. Another, from George Washington, which his father had kept above his desk when he was city manager of Teaneck, New Jersey, was: "Do not suffer your good nature...to say yes when you ought to say no."

当保罗有闲暇时间时，他喜欢去钓鱼。穿着背心和水靴，紧紧叼着雪茄，高高耸立在一条河上，这是沉思重大决策的好方法。他相信沉思。“拖延和繁荣”是他最喜欢的格言。另外一句则出自乔治·华盛顿，在担任新泽西州蒂内克市市执行长时，他父亲将这句话置于他桌子之上：“不要让你的善良本性受折磨...不要在该说不的时候说是。”

So when he was asked in 1974 to be president of the New York Fed, he went off on a fishing trip to chew it over. And in meetings and congressional-committee hearings later, as chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1987, he hid his bald head in smoke-clouds, as if he was slowly weighing up what answers he could possibly give. His salvo against America's inflation in 1979, which slew the dragon for decades, therefore seemed unusually abrupt. The times certainly required it, with annual inflation then at 12%. And his measures, announced at an extraordinary press conference in the boardroom of the Federal Reserve building in Washington, were drastic.

所以保罗在1974年受邀担任纽约联邦储备银行行长时，开启了一次钓鱼之旅来好好思考这个问题。随后，他在1979年至1987年之间担任美联储主席，在会议和国会委员会听证会上，保罗把他那光秃秃的脑袋藏在烟雾里，仿佛在慢慢地掂量他能说出什么答案。因此，他在1979年对拖累美国几十年的通货膨胀的猛烈抨击显得格外突然。当时也确实有必要，年通胀率达到12%。在华盛顿联邦储备委员会大楼会议室召开的特别新闻发布会上，他宣布的措施也很极端。

From then on the Fed would control not the price of money, by adjusting the interest rate, but its supply, leaving interest rates to be set by the market. He would force America into recession to cure people of their expectations that since prices would keep on rising, they must keep on spending. The downturn that followed—double-dip, because he briefly took his foot off the brake—brought soaring unemployment, reaching 10.8% in 1982, and a federal funds rate of over 20%, the highest in history, before both rates and prices eased. By 1983 inflation was less than 4%. Yet he had been ruminating about the beast, and how to subdue it, since his Princeton student days.

从那时起，美联储不再通过调整利率来控制货币价格，而是调整它的供给，使市场决定利率。人们预想，因为价格会持续上涨，所以他们必须得继续消费。保罗要迫使美国进入衰退来终止人们的这种预想。接下来的衰退-再次衰退，因为他暂时没有踩刹车-带来了极高的失业率，1982年失业率达到了10.8%，联邦基金利率超20%，达到历史最高，之后利率和价格都有所下降。到1983年，通胀率不到4%。然而，从保罗在普林斯顿上学时起，他就一直在思考这头野兽，以及如何制服它。