Steve Hanke Quotes

The Fed [Federal Reserve System], whether it likes it or not, is required to provide adequate reserves to the banking system in order for the government to finance its needs, even when that is inflationary.

The central focus of what we are doing at the Fed is to keep inflation from accelerating - and preferably decelerating.

The greatest economic power might in fact remain in the hands of the Federal Reserve. Economists credit the Fed's policy of keeping interest rates at historic lows with helping to pump up the economy and bring unemployment down.

Near-zero policy rates that may be considerably expansionary in an economy with high inflation could be contractionary when inflation is too close to zero, or worse, deflation has set in.

The Fed is totally open.

Ron Paul's crazy talk about the Federal Reserve makes more sense these days. Right now, every - all this debt issued by the United States people assume the Chinese are buying, no they don't want any more American debt. Ron Paul has a point there.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is committed to policies that promote maximum employment and price stability, consistent with our mandate from Congress.

The president has very little effect on the economy. If you want to put blame or credit, the main person who influences the business cycle is the head of the Federal Reserve Bank.

Austerity policy without currency devaluation can only hamper economic growth.

It's pointless to talk to Fed members about economics because they are academics who believe in money-printing. Some of them believe they didn't print enough, and so with these kinds of people, it is like running to the pope. What do you want to tell them?

I never liked quantitative easing. It's misunderstood by almost everybody. Flattening the yield curve is not stimulative; flattening the yield curve is anti-stimulative.

I think the Fed is not designed to have effective tools to deal with the economy. It should settle for just controlling the money supply. And - if it insists, it can worry about inflation.

To me, a wise and humane policy is occasionally to let inflation rise even when inflation is running above target.

You have to change people’s minds to stop inflation.

Let's turn inflation over to the post office. That'll slow it down.

Whip Inflation Now

For the first time the committee [Federal Reserve] was using communication — mere words — as its primary monetary policy tool.

Well, the chairman of Federal Reserve just made his move to rescue Barack Obama. We're gonna have QE3. We're gonna print some more money.

During the 1970s, inflation expectations rose markedly because the Federal Reserve allowed actual inflation to ratchet up persistently in response to economic disruptions - a development that made it more difficult to stabilize both inflation and employment.

I don't think quantitative easing is deliberately misleading, but I do think it's suspiciously bland and reassuring. It doesn't sound like anything big, experimental, scary and strange - which is what many economists think it is.

Negative interest rates have been employed by many, many central banks.

We have to remember there is not a big printing press in Washington that continually prints money over and over.

Forget quantitative easing - I've always thought the idea of injecting virtual money into the system is an accident waiting to happen.

No one thinks of controlling inflation of a continental-sized country by holding back municipal tariffs. Macroeconomic stability cannot be achieved through microeconomic intervention.

The government must do all it can to help reduce interest rates for business.