in World News Canada is about to discover Mark Carney is the man with the reverse Midas touch
Matthew Lynn
The ‘rock star’ former Governor of the Bank of England has left a trail of destruction behind his glossy jobs
He has global experience. He has proven leadership skills. And he has the connections and the clout needed to steer his country through a perilous moment in its history. As Mark Carney succeeds Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister of Canada, he has made much of his credentials as a “rock star” central banker and of his undoubtedly impressive collection of other grand-sounding jobs.
There is just one snag. As it turns out, it takes only a cursory glance at his record to work out that Carney’s reputation is completely overblown. In reality, he has been over-promoted all over again.
If politics was simply a matter of CVs, then Carney would be Roosevelt, Churchill and De Gaulle rolled into one. He is perhaps one of the most qualified men ever to take charge of one of the West’s major democracies. A Goldman Sachs banker by training, he served as Governor of the Bank of Canada, before being persuaded by George Osborne to become the first foreigner to run the Bank of England. Since then, he has distinguished himself as the leader of the Net Zero Banking Alliance, as a UN Climate Change Envoy, as chairman of the asset manager Brookfield, and of the financial news giant Bloomberg. He was, according to Osborne when he appointed him, “the outstanding central banker of his generation”.
But the truth is rather less glamorous. Over eight years at the Bank of England, Carney was at best an indifferent Governor, and, at worse, a disappointing failure. Despite his huge salary of more than £600,000 a year, more than any of his predecessors had been paid, he seemed to have little feel for the role. The City quickly nick-named him “the unreliable boyfriend” for his constant changes of direction on interest rates.
He printed too much money in the wake of the financial crisis, and then repeated the mistake all over again in the wake of the referendum on leaving the EU, responding as if he was in the middle of a financial emergency instead of dealing with a minor blip in trading relations. At the same time, regulatory standards were allowed to slide, and the City started to lose its role as one of the major global financial centres, with over-complex rules deterring companies from listing their shares in London.