EXCERPTS:
May 19 (Bloomberg) -- Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, a top outside adviser to President Barack Obama, said time is “growing short” for the U.S. to address problems ranging from its budget deficit to Social Security obligations.
“We better get started,” the 82-year-old former central banker said in a speech yesterday in Stanford, California. “Today’s concerns may soon become tomorrow’s existential crises.”
Volcker, speaking hours after the euro fell to a four-year low against the dollar, said Europe demonstrates for the U.S. the hazards of “uncontrolled borrowing....”
“Little has happened to allay my concerns” raised five years ago that “dangerous and intractable” problems were rising in the U.S., said Volcker, chairman of the president’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.
“Intractable not just because of the combination of complicated issues, but because there seemed to be so little willingness or capacity to do much about it,” he said during a dinner at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
