The consensus among academics and Fed officials is that active monetary policy, following Paul Volcker’s chairmanship of the Federal Reserve and continuing into the tenures of Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, was partly responsible for the Great Moderation: an economic period starting from the mid-1980s and lasting until the Great Recession. During this period, many developed economies were characterized by drastic declines in the volatility of aggregate macro indicators such as output, employment, and inflation.