faltering company. After five years as its chairman, the company nearly doubled its sales to just under $3 billion, and by 1976 Duns Review rated Bendix as "one of the five best-managed companies in the U.S." While Blumenthal headed Bendix, newly elected President Carter nominated him to become his Secretary of the Treasury, a position he served from January 23, 1977 to August 4, 1979. Cyrus Vance had originally wanted him to be his deputy when he became Carter's Secretary of State, but Carter decided he would be better placed as Secretary of the Treasury. His nomination was unanimously confirmed. That June, he traveled to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Paris headquarters for its annual conference, with its main agenda concerned with how Western powers would manage the sluggish recovery after the deep recession of 1974-75. Blumenthal first met Carter in 1975 at a meeting of the Trilateral Commission in Japan. Carter subsequently invited him to his home knowing his talents as a successful business manager and negotiator, and knew Blumenthal would offer him sound economic advice. Blumenthal recalls at the time, "The list of top Democratic businessmen isn't very long." In accepting the position, his income went from $473,000 per year to $66,000. He was also amused at the irony of reading a German newspaper headline, "A Berliner is to Become Carter's New Minister of Finance." As Secretary of the Treasury, however, he was never made a member of Carter's "inner circle," and his responsibilities were never clearly defined, writes historian Burton Ira Kaufman. Although he was made chair of Carter's Economic Policy Group (EPG), and was Carter's chief economic policy official, he was still unable to chart economic policy or be recognized as the administration's chief economic spokesman. He instead had to share the role with those closer to the president, which caused confusion among outsiders and weakened Blumenthal's effectiveness. Blumenthal took an active role in fighting inflation, which had increased from 7 percent at the beginning of 1978 to 11 percent by the fall. By the summer of 1979 inflation had reached 14 percent, with unemployment in some cities running close to 25 percent. Much of the increase had to do with OPEC raising oil prices. During this period, the U.S. dollar was also a target of one of the largest currency speculations in history by countries including Germany and Japan, whose currencies were