, Columnist
Paul Volcker’s Complicated Latin American Legacy
He wasn’t at fault for the continent’s “lost decade” of the 1980s, but he was partly responsible for it.
The burdens of public service.
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Paul Volcker is being remembered this week, deservedly, for helping to usher in an era of American prosperity in the 1980s by bringing U.S. inflation down from double digits. Yet an equally significant part of his legacy is the effects of the Volcker shock, as it is called, on the economies of Latin America.
For most of Latin America, the 1980s were a lost decade. Volcker was not at fault for the debacle, but the episode reveals the moral dilemmas facing any central banker.