Bert Lance, the Georgia banker and political advisor to Carter who became his Budget Director and was later forced to resign...said that if Volcker was appointed he would be "mortgaging his re-election to the Federal Reserve." Lance predicted that he would bring high interest rates and high unemployment. He was confirmed by the Senate Banking Committee in August, 1979, replacing Arthur Burns, an Austrian-born economist who was a CFR member with close ties to the Rockefellers. Volcker was against a gold-backed dollar or gold being used as a form of currency. He attempted to tighten the money situation in order to curb the 10% annual growth in the money supply, and to ease the pressure of loan demand. The result [of his policy] was a dramatic increase in interest rates, which climbed to 13.5% by September, 1979, and then soared to 21.5% by December, 1980.
[We may speculate] that this economic decline was purposely engineered to cause the political decline of Carter.