# The 'Money Doctor' Who Tamed Hyperinflation From Montenegro to Ecuador Is Now Pitching Venezuela on the Dollar > Economist Steve Hanke, who has guided currency reforms on four continents, is pushing Venezuela to fully dollarize as it battles roughly 400 percent inflation, according to Fortune. - Source: Money Standard - Canonical URL: https://moneystandard.co.uk/article/steve-hanke-money-doctor-pitches-full-dollarization-for-venezuela - Author: Money Standard Newsroom - Section: Economy - Published: 2026-08-21T22:59:03.390Z - Updated: 2026-08-21T22:59:03.390Z - Tags: Venezuela --- Steve Hanke has spent four decades advising governments on how to tame runaway currencies, and Venezuela may end up being the biggest test yet of his playbook, according to Fortune. The Johns Hopkins economics professor, known as the Money Doctor, has guided currency reforms on multiple continents, typically working pro bono and paying his own travel costs to preserve his independence from the governments he advises. His track record includes convincing Montenegro to abandon the hyperinflating Yugoslav dinar for the Deutschemark in 1999, overseeing Ecuador's switch to the US dollar in 2000, and advising Zimbabwe's government on a dollarization that virtually eliminated inflation until a political collapse in 2013 unwound it. He has also helped set up currency boards in Estonia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, and Bosnia. Venezuela now presents his most consequential opportunity. The country is grappling with roughly 400 percent annual inflation, down from 700 percent before Nicolas Maduro's removal, alongside oil production that has collapsed to 1.1 million barrels a day from 3.4 million before 1998. Government debt stands near $250 billion, about 150 percent of GDP and the highest in Latin America, while the bolivar has lost 78 percent of its value against the dollar in a single year, eroding the pay of roughly seven million public employees and pensioners by about a third every month. Hanke's proposed fix is full dollarization, scrapping the bolivar and the central bank entirely to remove the government's ability to print its way out of trouble. He estimates 50 to 80 percent odds that the plan clears the legislature, helped by the fact that much of the country has already dollarized on its own, with retail prices quoted in dollars and everyday transactions running through physical cash or dollar backed stablecoins like Tether. He has said taming inflation is the key that unlocks everything else Venezuela needs, from foreign investment in its oil sector to a functioning mortgage and credit market. Hanke is also pushing Venezuela to ramp up oil output more aggressively, pointing to a depletion rate of just 0.2 percent a year compared with 1.2 percent in Saudi Arabia and 1.5 percent in Kuwait, and suggesting the country could pursue a higher OPEC quota or leave the cartel altogether, following the UAE's exit earlier this year, which lifted its production 80 percent in four months and added $15 billion in annual revenue. Even so, Zimbabwe's reversal and Argentina's Javier Milei abandoning a similar dollar conversion pledge in office are reminders that currency reform only sticks when the political will behind it does too. --- Originally published by Money Standard. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://moneystandard.co.uk/article/steve-hanke-money-doctor-pitches-full-dollarization-for-venezuela.