Powell Wins a Place in Pantheon of Fed Chiefs Alongside Volcker

Jerome Powell was a middle-ranking Treasury Department official in the early 1990s when he first encountered legendary central banker Paul Volcker. “I was frightened of even meeting him,” the Federal Reserve chair recalled last year. “I was just so intimidated by this global figure. And he couldn’t have been nicer.”

Now, with just over 13 months remaining in Powell’s four-year term, some former central bank officials are saying he’ll go down in history as the institution’s most transformational chairman since the 6-foot-7-inch, cigar-chomping Volcker, who died a year ago at age 92. That sounds presumptuous for a man whose term isn’t even over, to be sure, and is without doubt a claim the modest, 5-foot-10-inch Powell would never make. Yet it’s not without merit.