The Paul Volcker Insider Lifestyle

In a rather pedestrian profile at New Yorker on Paul Volcker's battle to impose his ideas on the financial reform bill, we learn a tiny bit about how the former  Fed chairman lives these days. An office at Rockefeller center, dinner at Harvard and the jetting off to a Bilderberger meeting.

John Cassidy has the details:

On the evening of Wednesday, June 23rd, Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was monitoring events on Capitol Hill from his office, which overlooks the ice-skating rink at Rockefeller Center. Volcker, who is eighty-two years old, works at a polished granite desk covered with correspondence, books, and financial reports. Apart from a slight loss of hearing, he is in robust health, and when he rises to greet guests he towers above them. His height (six feet eight inches) is initially intimidating, but that impression is soon mitigated by his wry manner...

Dowd assured Volcker that Dodd’s proposal contained no big surprises, and Volcker went out to dinner at the Harvard Club...

The White House invited Volcker to come down for a meeting. On Christmas Eve, he had a long working lunch in the West Wing with Geithner and Summer...

 n early June, as Congress prepared to start work on reconciling the House and the Senate bills, Volcker went to Barcelona for the annual meeting of the Bilderberg Group, an élite organization of financiers, politicians, and journalists...

Is this the stuff he craves, which allows insiders to count on him when an "independent" study is needed by an "impartial" observer?