Volcker Gets Less Than He Wants in Curbing Excesses

26 June 2009  Bloomberg.com

The salad was made with the first green shoots from the White House garden. The main course was roast beef. The topic of conversation in the second-story Family Dining Room on a warm evening in April: President Barack Obama’s economic policies.

Obama sat at the head of the table, administration insiders arrayed along one side to his right. To his left, facing a French marble fireplace, were some of his harshest critics: Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman and Harvard University professor Kenneth Rogoff.

One chair on the insiders’ side was empty, according to attendees. It was reserved for Paul Volcker, the 81-year-old former Federal Reserve chairman who was an adviser to Obama during the campaign and now heads the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, or PERAB. He was stuck at the White House gate, trying to convince guards that he was expected for dinner. His plane from New York had been delayed by a storm, and his security clearance to enter the building that day had expired.

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