It would be a real voyage back to the future if President-elect Obama were to pick the next candidate as his new Secretary of the Treasury.  However, Paul Volcker is a fearless man who took on another looming financial crisis some 25 years ago and beat it back with draconian measures.

Volker, a native of Cape May, New Jersey, was raised in Teaneck.  He graduated from Princeton and earned an M.A. in political economy in 1951 from Harvard and attended the London School of Economics for two years as a Rotary Foundation Fellow.  To this date he has been granted over a dozen honorary degrees from American colleges and universities.

He was hired by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as an economist in 1952; five years later became a financial economist with Chase Manhattan Bank and five years after that joined the Department of the Treasury where he served as director of financial analysis and deputy under-secretary for monetary affairs.  He rejoined Chase in 1965 as vice president and director of planning.

Volcker was appointed under-secretary of the Treasury for international monetary affairs by Richard Nixon in 1969 then became president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.  In 1979 President Carter appointed him as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, an appointment renewed by President Reagan in 1983.

It was as Treasury Secretary that Volker earned his reputation.  He is widely credited with ending the stagflation crisis by limiting the growth of the money supply rather than by targeting interest rates.  For those of you who were not around at that time, the 1970's were characterized by rampant inflation which peaked at 13.5 percent in 1981. 

With Reagan's blessing, (perhaps the President was not about to argue with the 6'7" Democrat) Volker's policy of limiting the money supply raised interest rates to unheard of levels - home mortgages were carrying 16 to 18 percent rates in the early 1980s - and contributed to a significant depression at the same time.  The recession included the highest rates of unemployment since the depression and demonstrations against the Federal Reserve and Volker were wide-spread.  At one point farmers which, along with construction workers were badly hurt by the high interest rates, drove phalanxes of tractors through the streets of Washington, D.C. blocking access to the Federal Reserve headquarters.  However, by 1983 the inflation rate was lowered to 3.2 percent.

Volker left the Fed chairmanship when  his term expired in 1987.  He was replaced by Alan Greenspan.  He has remained active in both the public and private sector since that time, teaching at Princeton, serving as chairman of a New York investment bank, and investigating corruption in the Iraqi Oil for Food Program.  He is currently Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the think tank Group of Thirty and is a member of the Trilateral Commission.

Volcker was widowed in 1998.  He has two children

The Chattering Classes have been rather quiet about Volker during the last week, but U.S. News rates his chances of appointment to Treasury Secretary at 12 to 1.  In his favor are his credibility and experience under fire.  Also, it is said that Volker really, really wants the job.  Working against his chances is primarily his age, 81.  However, if 72 was not too old for a candidate to run for president, 81 should not be a game ender for a position from which he could easily be removed.

Of the nine names from our original prospect list, the one most likely to elicit a "Who?" is James (Jamie) L. Dimon, but his is not a name that is new to financial insiders.  Dimon is the investment banker, Chairman of J.P. Morgan Chase, who was the principal actor in the rescue of Bear Stearns last March.

Dimon was born in 1956 and got his start in financial circles by working summers at the stockbrokerage founded by his grandfather, a Greek immigrant.  He received his undergraduate degree in psychology and economics from Tufts University and an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1982.  He went to work for his mentor Sandy Weill at American Express and followed him a few years later when Weill took control of Commercial Credit from Control Data Corporation.  The two then took the small company on an oddessy of mergers and acquisitions that eventually allowed them to form Citigroup, one of the largest financial services conglomerates ever.

Dimon left Citigroup in late 1998, allegedly after a falling out with Weill, and became CEO of Bank One.  When that bank was acquired by J.P. Morgan Chase in 2004, he became the latter's president.

In addition to its acquisition of Bear Stearns, Chase, under Dimon's leadership, also beat out Bank of America and (sweet revenge) Citigroup to acquire Washinton Mutual just hours after it became the largest bank to fail in U.S. History.

Dimon, who is married with three children was named to Time Magazine's 2006 list of the world's 100 most influential people.

U.S. News, in giving Dimon odds of 30 to 1 of being selected Treasury chief, called him a "one of the real winners of the credit crisis" and says that he is intimately familiar with the financial innovations that the government has been struggling to understand and regulate.

The flip side of that same coin, however, makes his role as a Wall Street insider a legacy that is likely to costs him the job.

The last of our contenders is yet another Clinton Treasury Secretary hoping for a curtain call.

Robert Edward Rubin was born in New York in 1938 and raised in Miami Beach Florida.  He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, dropped out after a few days in the Harvard Law School then attended the London School of Economics and earned an LL.B. from Yale Law School in 1964

Rubin started his career as an attorney with a New York firm but soon joined Goldman Sachs' risk arbitrage department.  He became a general partner in the firm in 1971 and was Vice Chairman and Co-Chief Operating Officer from 1987 to 1990 and Co-Chairman and Co-Senior Partner from 1990 to 1992.

When President Clinton was inaugurated he appointed Robin as Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and directed the National Economic Council, a Clinton creation.

Rubin became the second of three Clinton Treasury Secretaries (the first, Lloyd Bentsen is deceased) in 1995.  Almost immediately thereafter President Clinton, acting on the advice of Rubin and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, provided $20 billion in loan guanantees to end a financial crisis in Mexico; then Rubin, Greenspan, and another possible Treasury pick Larry Summers later worked with the International Monetary Fund to ease financial upheavals in Russian, Asian, and Latin American markets.  Time Magazine at the time called the three "The Committee to Save the World."

There has been a lot of criticism of Rubin's policies as helping to set the stage for the current financial crisis.  He and Greenspan strongly opposed the regulation of derivatives, recommending that Congress permanently deny the Commodities Futures Trading Commission of regulatory authority over derivatives."

In 1999 Rubin joined Citigroup and consolidation of investment, commercial banking, and insurance services ala Citigroup has been implicated in the subprime crisis.  He also attempted to save Enron, which was a debtor of Citigroup, by asking a Treasury official to convince bond-rating agencies not to downgrade Enron's debt rating.  A congressional investigation cleared Rubin of any wrongdoing in this matter.

He is currently Director and Senior Counselor of Citigroup.

The odds of Rubin being selected to reprise his Treasury Secretary role are given at 32 to 1.  In his favor is his experience with financial problems in many world hotspots during his first stint in the position.  His drawbacks given his alleged role in events leading up to the current situation are obvious.