“Steve Hanke has a good pension and lives in another country. He has introduced the position of “the father of the Bulgarian Currency Board”, which is likely to make him an academic work in his professorial material. But in fact the Doppler Monetary Board did it with people from the Viden government, Bulgarian teams and those from the International Monetary Fund”, said banker Levon Hampartzumyan.
“There are not many successful boards in the world. The Bulgarian is one of the few that gave good results”, he said.
“We often forget that we are competitors with other countries. Hanke is from a country that is interested in the world markets being dominated by the American dollar,” said Harizanov. According to him, “expecting him to say something good about the euro is in the realm of wishful thinking” and may not happen that forever.
“It worries me that someone is once again pointing the finger at us about the fact that we are a corrupt country. There is no politician here who even comes close to the financial success of Pelosi and her husband”, he said and clarified that this does not mean that there is no corruption in Bulgaria, but this is not a reason for Hanke’s opinion.
“It doesn’t matter what Hanke says, what matters is what we see here,” concluded political analyst Georgi Harizanov.
Earlier, Steve Hanke commented on Bulgaria’s entry into the Eurozone.
On the air of NOVA, he said that Bulgaria’s entry into the Eurozone would be a disaster. “One of the reasons is the division between the politicians and the elites who want the Euro area, and on the other hand the people of Bulgaria. Public opinion wants us to keep the leva and the currency board, because it works, it would be stupid to change it,” he said.
“There is a distrust of politicians and a deep cynicism towards politics. Only about 30% of eligible voters are expected to vote in the next election. They vote for people they don’t know – no one has actually voted for them. They want to remove the leva and take the euro,” the professor believes.
“There is no benefit to the euro, because with the Monetary Board system, which I designed and helped create in 1997, as you know, the lev is really a clone of the euro. Why be formally locked in the Eurozone and give up the formalities you have? The lev is equal to the euro”
Where is Bulgaria in the Hanke Misery Index?
“Last year I studied 157 countries and Bulgaria was very poor. It ranks 117. The situation is worse in Argentina, Venezuela and Lebanon. The best are China, Malta, Switzerland, Japan and Thailand. The Hanke Misery Index takes the unemployment rate and I give it double weight. The other factor of misery is inflation, so let’s add that to doubling unemployment. We also increase the interest rate on bank loans,” explained Hanke.
“Looking at the current numbers for this year, the situation in Bulgaria will improve” According to him, the main reason for this behavior is the sharp reduction in inflation. “I think Bulgaria will be at a better level than in 2023,” said the professor.
Steve Hanke is known as the “father” of the Bulgarian Currency Board, he received eight honorary doctorate degrees, three of them in Bulgaria. He was an economic adviser to President Petar Stoyanov, chief economist under US President Ronald Reagan, and was an adviser to five foreign heads of state. In 2018, he was named one of the 25 most influential people in the world by World Trade Magazine.
