When Volcker looks around now, he sees "a hell of a mess in every direction," including a lack of basic respect for government institutions, a current Fed that seems to be following a completely arbitrary benchmark and a "swamp" in Washington run by plutocrats.

"At least the military still has all the respect. But I don't know, how can you run a democracy when nobody believes in the leadership of the country?" Volcker asks New York Times columnist and CNBC "Squawk Box" co-anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin in a column for the newspaper's DealBook section.

"Tall Paul" is most known for willfully taking the country into recession in the early 1980s to finally defeat the inflation that had been strangling the economy. Since then, he's lent his name to the "Volcker rule" part of banking reform legislation that restricts risk-taking at big Wall Street institutions.

In a book set for release Oct. 30, Volcker laments the current state of conditions, particularly the monied interests eating away at the system of governing.