History of Money Series: When the Fed Took Rates to 20%

Podcast: Creating Richer Lives · Karl Eggerss

Opublikowano: 2026-09-05

In the early 1980s, homebuilders started mailing two by fours to the Federal Reserve. Car dealers mailed in keys to cars nobody could finance. Farmers drove their tractors to Washington and parked them in a circle around the Fed building. The chairman had a security detail and death threats. He was an economist. In this episode of the History of Money series, Karl Eggerss goes back to 1979 through 1982, when Paul Volcker took interest rates to roughly 20 percent, pushed 30 year mortgage rates past 18 percent, and drove unemployment to levels this country had not seen since the...