83 Facts About Steve Hanke

Steve H Hanke is an American economist and professor of applied economics at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Steve Hanke is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, California, and co-director of the Johns Hopkins University's Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise in Baltimore, Maryland.

Steve Hanke was a senior economist with President Ronald Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers from 1981 to 1982, and has served as an adviser to heads of state in countries throughout Asia, South America, Europe, and the Middle East.

Steve Hanke is known for his work on currency boards, dollarization, hyperinflation, water pricing and demand, benefit-cost analysis, privatization, and other topics in applied economics.

Steve Hanke has written extensively as a columnist for Forbes, The National Review, and other publications.

Steve Hanke has been accused of spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic as a result of his critique of the effectiveness of lockdowns, as well as the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and was listed as a Russian propagandist by Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation.

Steve Hanke was born in Macon, Georgia, in 1942 and grew up in Atlantic, Iowa, where he attended Atlantic High School.

Steve Hanke then attended the University of Colorado Boulder in Boulder, where he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity.

Steve Hanke then joined the faculty of the Johns Hopkins University, where he initially specialized in water resource economics.

At present, Steve Hanke teaches courses in applied economics and finance that are widely recognized as a gateway for Hopkins students to gain employment on Wall Street.

Steve Hanke currently holds editorial positions with The International Economy, The Independent Review, Cato Journal, Review of Austrian Economics, Economic Journal Watch, and Central Banking.

Steve Hanke is a senior fellow and director of the Troubled Currencies Project at the Cato Institute, a special counselor to the Center for Financial Stability, and a member of the Charter Council of the Society for Economic Measurement.

Steve Hanke is a senior advisor at Renmin University's International Monetary Research Institute, in association with Nobel laureate Robert Mundell of Columbia.

In 1969, Steve Hanke began his academic career as a water resource economist in the Johns Hopkins Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering, a department founded by famed sanitary engineer Abel Wolman.

Steve Hanke was hired to continue the water-related research program at Johns Hopkins that began during the Geyer era.

Steve Hanke produced a number of important pieces of scholarship, including the first event study of the impact of water meter installation on water use, as well as sewer interceptor design criteria which are still commonly used today in Europe.

In 1981, Steve Hanke was appointed a senior economist with the president's Council of Economic Advisers, where his responsibilities included the Reagan White House's water portfolio.

Steve Hanke continues to be active in the water resources field, focusing primarily on municipal water system privatization.

Steve Hanke is a member of the Johns Hopkins University Global Water Program.

Steve Hanke has produced eight books and numerous articles and proposals dealing with the privatization of public-sector resources.

Steve Hanke worked with Barney Dowdle of the University of Washington and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians of Lincoln County, Oregon, on a proposal to privatize portions of their reservation, as a means of improving economic opportunity on Native American reservations.

Steve Hanke was known as a member of the supply-side economics movement within the Reagan administration.

In 1982, Hanke left the CEA, joining a number of influential Reagan administration supply-siders, including Martin Anderson, Norman B Ture, and Paul Craig Roberts.

Steve Hanke has authored numerous articles on the subject of privatization, including the entry for "Privatization" in the 1987 edition of The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics.

Steve Hanke co-authored with Sir Alan Walters the entry for "Currency Boards" in the 1992 edition of The New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance.

Steve Hanke employs a methodology, based on the principle of purchasing power parity, which allows him to accurately estimate inflation in countries with very high inflation rates.

Since then, Steve Hanke has documented two additional cases of hyperinflation: one occurred in Venezuela in 2016, and the other occurred in Zimbabwe in 2017.

In 2013, Steve Hanke founded the Troubled Currencies Project, a collaboration between the Johns Hopkins University and the Cato Institute, in order to track exchange-rate and inflation data in countries including Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela.

Steve Hanke argues that changes in nominal national income are a function of changes in broad money aggregates.

Steve Hanke has employed SMBMA as a method of analyzing the response of various countries to the 2008 financial crisis.

In particular, Steve Hanke has employed SMBMA for the United States, the United Kingdom, and various countries in the European Union to study the pro-cyclical effects of higher capital-asset ratios implemented during economic downturns.

Steve Hanke is on the advisory board of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum in London, where he regularly contributes to the OMFIF's The Bulletin and is involved in meetings regarding financial and monetary systems.

Steve Hanke began advising political leaders on economic issues in the late 1970s, when he served as a member of the Governor's Council of Economic Advisers for the State of Maryland, along with Carl Christ and Clopper Almon.

Steve Hanke has advised five presidents ; five cabinet ministers ; and has held two cabinet-level positions.

In 1998, under Steve Hanke's leadership, Friedberg Mercantile Group, Inc was one of the few trading shops to predict the devaluation of the Russian ruble.

Steve Hanke predicted that the devaluation would occur after mid-year, and the ruble collapsed shortly thereafter, on August 17,1998.

In collaboration with his then-post-doctoral student, Kurt Schuler, Steve Hanke developed a blueprint for a currency board reform package, which he proposed in a number of countries throughout the 1990s, including Albania, Argentina, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ecuador, Estonia, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Montenegro, Russia, Venezuela, and Yugoslavia.

In 1989, Steve Hanke met Argentine President Carlos Menem, who connected Steve Hanke and his wife, Liliane, with the right-wing libertarian faction in the Argentine Congress led by Alvaro Alsogaray, for the purpose of developing a currency reform that would end Argentina's inflation problems.

Steve Hanke was an early proponent of a currency board system for Argentina, which he outlined in a 1991 book.

Later, Steve Hanke worked closely with Menem and members of the Argentine Congress to implement a currency board, along the general lines of Steve Hanke and Schuler's original proposal.

At the time, Steve Hanke was described by Argentine newspapers as "Cavallo's spokesman", as well as the "generator of confidence" in the Argentine economy.

In October 1991, the year the system was implemented, Steve Hanke warned in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the convertibility system could begin to function as a central bank, and eventually collapse.

Steve Hanke wrote many articles showing that the convertibility system was not a currency board.

In February 1999, Menem asked Steve Hanke to prepare a dollarization blueprint for Argentina.

In January 1990, Steve Hanke was appointed the personal economic adviser to Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Zivko Pregl.

That same year, Steve Hanke began advising Albanian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy Gramoz Pashko on the possibility of establishing a currency board in Albania.

In 1990, Steve Hanke anticipated Bulgaria's 1991 hyperinflation episode and began designing a currency board system for Bulgaria.

Steve Hanke incorporated this proposal into a monograph co-authored with Kurt Schuler.

Steve Hanke continued his work on a Bulgarian currency board, periodically visiting Sofia throughout the early 1990s.

In 1997, during Bulgaria's second episode of hyperinflation, Steve Hanke was appointed as an adviser to Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov, and worked to bring about the establishment of Bulgaria's currency board.

Steve Hanke continued to serve as President Stoyanov's adviser until the end of his term in 2002.

Steve Hanke remains active in Bulgaria, as a vocal supporter of the currency board, the country's flat tax, and anti-corruption measures.

Steve Hanke frequently contributes to the Bulgarian publications Capital, Trud and Novinite, among others.

In May 1992, Steve Hanke presented the currency board blueprint to members of Estonia's Constituent Assembly in Tallinn.

Later, Steve Hanke began collaborating with the LFMI during regular visits to Vilnius.

Steve Hanke began serving as a special adviser to the US government in December 1996 and was tasked with ensuring that the central bank law resulted in a currency board system that was as orthodox as possible.

Shortly after his appointment, Steve Hanke published a critique of the IMF currency board proposal.

In February 1998, Indonesian President Suharto invited Steve Hanke to serve as his economic adviser.

Steve Hanke recommended that Indonesia institute an orthodox currency board, linking the rupiah to the US dollar at a fixed exchange rate.

Steve Hanke referred to his alternative reform package for Indonesia as "IMF Plus".

Steve Hanke was named one of the 25 most influential people in the world by World Trade Magazine during this time.

Later, officials including former US Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, as well as former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, conceded that criticism of Steve Hanke's proposal did not stem from opposition to the economics of Steve Hanke's proposal, but rather out of concern that a stable rupiah would thwart US-led efforts to oust Suharto.

In 1999, Steve Hanke and Montenegrin economist Zeljko Bogetic, who was an economist at the IMF at the time, wrote Crnogorska marka, a book published in Montenegro, proposing an orthodox currency board for Montenegro, which was part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Steve Hanke was an early proponent of currency boards and later dollarization in Ecuador.

In May 1996, Steve Hanke traveled to Ecuador to encourage then-presidential candidate Abdala Bucaram to pursue a currency board for Ecuador.

In 2001, Steve Hanke was appointed adviser to Ecuador's Minister of Finance and Economy, to assist with the implementation of dollarization.

In 2003, Steve Hanke was awarded the honorary degree Doctor of Arts by the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, and in 2004, he was named professor asociado by the Universidad del Azuay in Cuenca, Ecuador, in honor of his reform efforts in Ecuador and scholarship on dollarization.

Steve Hanke has been trading commodities and currencies for over 60 years.

Steve Hanke has trained a number of Johns Hopkins students who have gone on to successful careers in finance.

Steve Hanke is chairman emeritus of the Friedberg Mercantile Group, Inc in Toronto.

In May 2019, Steve Hanke was appointed chairman of AMG's supervisory board.

Steve Hanke has taken several other notable successful trading positions during his career.

Steve Hanke has worked as an expert witness in financial litigation, specializing in derivatives cases.

Steve Hanke began writing his "Point of View" column for Forbes magazine in 1997, continuing to do so through 2010.

Steve Hanke was a columnist at Forbes where he wrote five columns a month, and later became a contributor at National Review.

Steve Hanke is a regular contributor to the Opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, ZeroHedge, Gulf News, OMFIF's The Bulletin, and the International Monetary Institute bulletin at the Renmin University of China, among others.

In June 2020, Steve Hanke wrongly tweeted that Vietnam was among the "rotten apples" of COVID-19 data after misattributing the country's zero death count as "No Data Reported".

In January 2022, Steve Hanke co-authored a working paper arguing that lockdowns had "little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality" but had "devastating" effects on society.

PolitiFact concluded that Steve Hanke had "repeatedly elevated false claims about the pandemic", citing his previous remark on Twitter, which stated that national lockdowns and COVID-19 vaccine policies are "fascist".

In February 2022, Steve Hanke shared a video showing a man on fire and claimed he was protesting the Italian government's COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

Since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Steve Hanke has voiced opposition to the sanctions against Russia, calling them "for losers".

In December 2022, Steve Hanke shared a video on Twitter purportedly showing Slovaks protested against their government's support for Ukraine and "the heavy burden it's imposing on them".

Steve Hanke's tweet was later deleted after outcry on social media and criticisms from multiple Slovak media outlets accusing him of spreading misinformation about the war in Ukraine.