We know this from the horse’s mouth, the former New Dealer who was at the centre of the 1971 Nixon Shock and who, between 1979 and 1987, chaired America’s central bank, the Fed. In a 1978 speech at Warwick University, Paul Volcker explained succinctly and cynically what they were up to: ‘[A] controlled disintegration in the world economy is a legitimate objective for the 1980s.’
