Volcker and Obama: A Balanced Economic Partnership

Volcker, associated by many with the boom economy of the 1980s, appeared with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Tuesday at a roundtable discussion with voters in Florida, along with Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Democratic governors from battleground states.

Volcker was an early signee onto the Obama camp—literally. His endorsement of the Illinois senator, granted in January, during the height of the Democratic primary against N.Y. Sen. Hillary Clinton, was written in longhand.

Once Obama became the official Democratic presidential nominee, he increasingly consulted Volcker for financial advice. Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s economic adviser and fellow University of Chicago faculty member, saw an increase in emails from campaign aides and strategists asking for Volcker’s phone number. It’s just as well that the former Fed chief and Obama chat via cell phone—Volcker does not have a computer, his assistant prints out his emails for him.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Obama’s first major campaign speech on the economy, given at New York’s Cooper Union in March, was speckled with “Mr. Volcker’s fingerprints.” In a policy plug reminiscent of Volcker’s early 1980s meetings with the Fed, Obama in his speech called for a “revamped” regulatory framework and pointed to deregulation as a cause for the economic slump, both hallmarks of Volcker’s drives while Fed chief.