Steve Hanke's Contributions

Ever since the US Federal Reserve (Fed) began to consider raising the federal funds rate, which it eventually did in December 2015, a cottage industry has grown up around taper talk. Will the Fed raise rates, or won’t it?

The Tax Foundation released its inaugural “International Tax Competitiveness Index” (ITCI) on September 15th, 2014. The United States was ranked an abysmal 32nd out of the 34 OECD member countries for the year 2014.

We are still in the grip of the Great Recession. Economic growth remains anemic and below its trend rate in most parts of the world. And what’s more, this state of subdued economic activity has been with us for over seven years.

The intermediary-free, digital transactions characteristic of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are an important step towards exchanges free of regulatory meddling. In addition, this technology should enable low-cost banking accessible to anyone with a cellphone.

President Obama set the chattering classes abuzz after his recent unilateral announcement to raise the minimum wage for newly hired Federal contract workers. During his State of the Union address in January...

A hallmark of socialism and interventionism is failure. Venezuela is compelling proof of this, having spent the past half century going down the tubes. Indeed, in the 1950’s, it was one of Latin America’s most well off countries.

Most who have graded Prof. Ben Bernanke’s twelve years at the Federal Reserve have issued marks which range from A to a gentleman’s C. I think those marks are much too generous. Indeed, I think a failing mark would be more appropriate.

It seems as though each passing day brings yet another piece of bad economic news coming out of Venezuela. For months, I have been tracking the decline of Venezuela’s economy and its currency, the bolivar.

Well, it’s official, the economic talkinghead establishment has declared war on Germany. The opening shots in this battle were fired by none other than the United States Treasury Department,which had the audacity to blame Germany for a weak Eurozone recovery in its semi-annual foreign exchange report.

The story of the Venezuelan economy and its troubled currency, the bolivar, can be summed up with the following phrase: “From bad to worse”—over and over again. Yes, the ever deteriorating situation in Venezuela has taken yet another turn for the worse.

The World Bank has been producing its annual “Doing Business” report since 2004 and its 2014 edition ranking Hong Kong second out of 189 economies surveyed, in contrast to mainland China’s score of 96, hardly seems controversial.

For months, the American public has received a steady stream of new information detailing the massive scale and scope of the United States’ spying activities. Of course, maintaining a surveillance state powerful enough to reach into the inboxes of world leaders, friend and foe, is not cheap.

Well, it’s official. President Obama has picked Janet Yellen as his nominee to be the next Federal Reserve Chairman. In the months leading up to this announcement, the press unanimously dubbed Yellen the Queen of the Doves, pointing to her reluctance to roll back the Fed’s Quantitative Easing program.

Since 2004, the World Bank has produced the annual Doing Business report, which ranks countries on ten factors reflecting the ease with which entrepreneurs and businesses may conduct economic activity in a given country.

Given all the attention that the Federal Reserve has garnered for its monetary “stimulus” programs, it’s perplexing to many that the U.S. has been mired in a credit crunch. After all, conventional wisdom tells us that the Fed’s policies...

Money matters — it’s a maxim of Prof. Milton Friedman that I repeat often in my columns. Since the Northern Rock bank run of 2007 — the "opening shot" of the financial crisis — the money supply, broadly measured, in the United States, Great Britain, and the Eurozone has taken a beating.