Chairman of America's Federal Reserve, appointed by Richard Nixon in 1970. He was the last Fed chair with a truly close relationship with the president. Under pressure from the White House, Burns cut interest rates, helping to cause a fearsome surge in inflation that took more than a decade, and several recessions, to tame. Thomas Drechsel of the University of Maryland estimates that raising political pressure on the Fed by half as much as Nixon did, for six months, would lift prices by 8% and do nothing for economic growth. His chairmanship remains notorious.
Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability: Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some useful work done.