This is a time of testing — a testing not only of our capacity collectively to reach coherent and intelligent policies, but to stick with them. - Paul Volcker

I start from the premise that the underlying pres­sures toward integration and interdependence are growing stronger, not weaker. We cannot reverse or stop the advancing technology that brings us fast and cheap communication and transportation, or the spread of knowledge.

It is a sobering fact that the prominence of central banks in this century has coincided with a general tendency towards more inflation, not less. [I]f the overriding objective is price stability, we did better with the nineteenth-century gold standard and passive central banks, with currency boards, or even with "free banking."

In the 1950s and 1960s, a substantial number of economists taking on a role of social philosopher defended a "little" inflation as a kind of social solvent, helping to reconcile competing political and economic pressures.… It was a game of mirrors, but it seemed acceptable for a while, more acceptable than imposing the degree of fiscal, monetary and other restraints necessary to deal with inflation.