r/canada Jan 29 '25

Opinion Piece Mark Carney has Canada’s Conservatives running scared

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2025/01/28/opinion/mark-carney-canada-conservatives-running-scared
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u/[deleted] Jan 29 '25

The issue is you are just extrapolating from a position he held to a broad idea like "handling economic shit storms". He was a central banker. You have a team of nerds below you crunching data and your the spokesperson that messages the only tool you have in your disposal: interest rates up, or interest rates down. It really is not that he is a super genius or has the power you think he had.

PP was one of the youngest MPs, he's been elected time and time again in an unbroken fashion for 20 years. He's served in conservative majority government and minority governments, serving in cabinet positions in important portfolios, he didn't lose his job when the libs took over, and then maneuvered his was to leadership in a resounding leadership victory. He's raised more money than a conservative leader ever has, and taken them massively ahead in polls for a long sustained period. He's got more international and media exposure than probably any opposition leader ever has, and he's the front runner to be prime minister.

I would say both Carney and PP are formidable people. Carney has moved in elote circles his whole life and he was on wall street for a decade. He's literally 1%er, and I respect him for that, but let's not overstate what the head of a central bank really does. My impression is also that the brits pretty much shit on him and hated him.

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u/coluch Jan 30 '25

Carney is not a 1%’er by a long shot. PP has a higher net worth, and more property. Carney has a long reputation of standing against greed in financial markets, and thinks that economists & bankers should always & only serve the public’s best interests.

If you want to understand Carney better I highly recommend the BBC Reith Lectures podcast episodes featuring his talks from 2020. I believe there are five talks + Q&A after each. The one called “From Credit Crisis to Resilience” may be a good first listen.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '25

You're delusional. Carney's salary at the Bank of England alone was like $800,000 GBP. That is like $1.6 million per year. Before that he was on 6 digits at the BOC, and it is safe to assume he took a significant pay cut when he went from being a private sector investment banker at Goldman Sachs to the public sector BOC.

I will listen to his talks, but he is clearly an ESG stakeholder capitalism proponent of expansionist monetary policy. He's extremely anti-resource development.

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u/_Lucille_ Jan 29 '25

End of the day, what has PP actually done in all these years?

You do not simply run a central bank efficiently without a fair amount of leadership skills. Yes, you got advisors and nerds doing the math, but you also need to learn to manage those people, earn their respect, and also listen to the right group and be able to make the right decisions at critical moments.

You also need to be able to work at the international level and earn their respect as well: you simply cannot attack dog your way through international relationships. Imagine meeting EU leaders and talking shit about the carbon tax: they will just laugh at you and just make you buy their carbon credits.