----------In the early 1980s, Volcker was vilified by the public for having triggered a severe recession in order to curb runaway price increases. Home builders put postage stamps on bricks and on 2-by-4 wooden planks and mailed them to the Fed to protest how super-high interest rates had wrecked their businesses.
Auto dealers, stuck with lots full of unsold cars, did the same with car keys. Angry farmers, struggling with high debts, drove their tractors to Washington and blockaded the Fed’s headquarters.
One of the mailed 2-by-4s ended up with an enduring legacy at the Fed: David Wilcox, a young staffer under Volcker who later rose to direct the Fed’s research and statistics division, said he received one of the 2-by-4s from Larry Slifman, a former senior economist in the division, and kept it on his desk until his retirement last year. Wilcox said he held onto it “as a constant reminder of how vitally important it is that no major central bank ever lose control of inflation again, creating the need for someone like Volcker to do the incredibly courageous things he did.------------------------------------
