Volcker became a critic of the Fed’s response to the financial crisis after the central bank orchestrated the sale of Bear Stearns Cos. to JPMorgan Chase in March 2008 by taking some of Bear Stearns’s riskiest assets on to the Fed’s own balance sheet. The central bank was operating at “the very edge” of its legal authority, he said in an April 2008 speech to the Economic Club of New York.
He also challenged the easy-money policies under Greenspan, without attacking his successor by name. In an October 2008 interview with Charlie Rose, he said, “We bent over backwards to ease money for reasons I didn’t understand.”
In 2013 he formed the New York-based Volcker Alliance, an organization aimed at rebuilding public trust in government and enhancing the effectiveness of public administration.
Volcker had two children, Janice and James, with the former Barbara Bahnson, whom he married in 1954. Her severe arthritis and diabetes kept her in New York during her husband’s tenure as Fed chairman, and he would commute home from Washington on weekends. She died in 1998. In 2010, Volcker married his longtime assistant, Anke Dening.
--With assistance from Christine Harper.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.