Reply #30: Love the imagery of addicts Volcker invokes in my mind. Have Steppenwolf's 'The Pusher'

[54anickel]

stuck in my head after reading that. Looks like we're all heading into rehab.

snip>
...Volcker thinks Americans have been living above their means for too long.

"It is the United States as a whole that became addicted to spending and consuming beyond its capacity to produce," Volcker lectured the Economic Club of New York in April. "It all seemed so comfortable."

Bringing consumption back in line with income would not only crimp individuals and families, but also require major readjustments in the global economy, which has relied on the U.S. as consumer of last resort.

More oversight

Volcker has become a skeptic of modern Wall Street, worried that the nation's entire financial system has evolved to a point that the government no longer has effective control over all of its important components. And the financial industry has become beholden to complex financial engineering that clouds the picture.

"The market was being run by mathematicians who didn't know financial markets," he said this year after the crisis struck.