Nation: Defender of The Dollar

For Volcker, happiness is tight money and 20¢ cigars

This good gray banker is not without humor. Invited to a Halloween party in 1970, 6-ft. 7-in. Paul Volcker daubed his bald pate with green body paint, donned a pair of emerald tights and arrived as the Jolly Green Giant. Even at work, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, who last week so jolted the U.S. economy, appears equally unbankerly. He is seldom without a fetid, 20¢ gold seal stogie clamped between teeth stained with nicotine. Ashes invariably litter the lapels of his rumpled,...