Where is Paul Volcker when you need him?
In the early 1980s, the late Federal Reserve chairman stared down double-digit inflation and made it blink first.
Back when huge shoulder pads were in and Twisted Sister was at the height of its popularity, Volcker helped President Ronald Reagan wring inflation out of the economy in what proved to be an extremely traumatic but also necessary process. Volcker’s work in constricting the money supply with interest rates almost unthinkably high — the federal funds rate peaked at 20% — helped pave the way to the economic expansion of the Reagan era.