Books and Arts; Book Review;Paul Volcker；Tall tale；Volcker: The Triumph of Persistence. By William Silber.Alan Greenspan may be the most famous central banker of the modern era, but Paul Volcker has been the most influential.He played a crucial diplomatic role during the death of the Bretton Woods financial system in the early 1970s,which severed the link between money and gold and ushered in floating exchange rates.As head of the Federal Reserve from 1979, Mr Volcker then tamed the inflation that ensued,bringing monetary stability in the face of political opposition to the very high interest rates required.In doing so, he set the template for modern economic management,built around an independent central bank with an implicit, or explicit, inflation target.After serving at the Treasury under Richard Nixon, the towering (6ft 7in)Mr Volcker was appointed to the Fed by both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.More recently he has been an adviser to Barack Obama,who traded on the former Fed chief's credibility by dubbing his plan to end banks' proprietary trading the “Volcker rule”.This long record of public service earns the admiration of William Silber, his new biographer.Mr Volcker could have earned much more on Wall Street.Upon becoming head of the Fed, his salary was halved. To balance their domestic budget, his wife,
