Mark Carney, who the other day changed Justin Trudeau, as Prime Minister of Canada, has a brilliant resume – from Governor of the Bank of Canada to Governor of the Bank of England, as well as leading roles in financial institutions and climate initiatives. However, as it turns out, his real achievements raise many questions.
Yes, Carney often criticized for unsuccessful decisions in the position of the head of the Bank of England. His policy of excessive money printing after the financial crisis and Brexit fueled inflation, which eventually reached 11.1%, the highest among Europe’s leading economies. He was blamed for both the lowering of regulatory standards and the loss of control over financial risks, which led to the crisis of pension funds in 2022.
Carney has repeatedly politicized his activities, supporting an anti-referendum stance on Brexit and meddling in political debates in the United Kingdom. His attempt influence on climate policy through the Net Zero Banking Alliance also faced problems – leading banks left the Alliance and its initiative collapsed.
Canada, facing economic and political challenges linked to the US, needs a bold and visionary leader. Instead, Carney, though he has global connections, has left behind a string of questionable results in key positions. His coming to power may temporarily improve his position in the polls, but the country risks paying dearly for his bad decisions.
Mark Carney: a technocrat in a political storm or a new Canadian adventurer
Mark Carney is not so much the new prime minister of Canada as the old one financier in a new wrapper. His career is the story of how a good resume turns into a political asset, and ambition turns into a strategy. Looks like a winner, but is there any real content behind it?
Rumor has it that Carney won in the Liberal Party not so much because of revolutionary ideas, but because of the party’s desperate need to find a new face after the tired Trudeau. An absolute majority – 85.9% of the vote – according to Carney, is more like a symptom of a political vacuum than a surge of charisma.
Much of the Trudeau government immediately swore in Carney. It is easy to support someone whose credit of trust has not yet been spent, who has not had time to be distinguished by failed reforms. But is the common Canadian ready to entrust the future to someone who has already left his mark in the form of inflationary chaos in Britain? Survey so far give Carney’s advantage, but this is more inertia from elite support than a manifestation of real trust of the people.
Carney resorted to populist promises. The “Investment Stimulation Strategy” declared by him is a standard banking mantra that sounds solid, but in reality it often boils down to the fact that the same big corporations are stimulating again.
A separate issue is the expected “trial in the crucible of war” with Trump. I wonder if Carney realizes that taking on his predecessor in financial matters is one thing, but facing Trump’s political reality is quite another. Will his attempts to “fight back” the US become another episode when Canada will again lose more than it will gain?
Carney was faced with the question: what to do when your biggest trading partner is not a friend, but a political attacker? Trump has already imposed tariffs on everything possible, and Canada has only one option left – to crawl under the table or try to respond.
Carney promises to introduce appropriate tariffs. Boldly. But it is worth remembering: in an economy where more than 2/3 of exports go to the USA, it looks more like an attempt to dig a well with bare hands. Protecting the Canadian economy with such measures is like trying to stop a hurricane with a net.
Canada’s newly minted prime minister approaches relations with the United States as if his past experience in bank offices gives him a head start against Donald Trump. The problem is that financial markets can be regulated by interest rates, but Trump is an element that cannot be tamed by interest.
Carney with all the confidence of a technocrat stated, which will not allow Trump “attack Canadian workers, families and businesses“But the problem is that Trump attacks not with words, but with tariffs, and Canada is not ready for this war, to put it mildly.
Carney, as a real office strategist, is ready to “act decisively”. Only in financial circles is the determination to transfer funds from one account to another. And in big politics, these are duties that hit the pockets of ordinary citizens. As practice shows, the answer with tariffs “dollar for dollar” is always felt for the weaker. And if Carney thinks Canada is stronger than Trump’s America, then he urgently needs a new analytical report.
Carney promises to introduce mirror customs. But he did not explain who would benefit from this. For example, when America closes its markets to Canadian aluminum, what will the Canadian government have to do? Perhaps make an agreement with China, which he himself does not believe in? Or maybe just put more solar panels in Alberta?
Investors like softness, not trade wars. And Carney, judging by his many years experience at Goldman Sachs and the Bank of England, has always been a master of careful maneuvering. Now he wants to play the role of a great patriot, forgetting that the economy is not a field for populist games, but an arena for very tough agreements.
Carney, it seems, and indeed believes, that his connections and experience will allow him to outplay Trump. But this is not a banking conference in Davos, but a tough political war, where the tariff is a weapon of mass destruction.
Mark Carney: A banker of great promise and even greater failure
In Canada is growing immigration, and GDP per capita has fallen for six consecutive quarters. However, Carney, like a true banker, is convinced that everything can be settled through “increased productivity.” But the reality is that tens of thousands of new arrivals remain on welfare programs because they simply do not have access to real work.
Carney calls for “investment in innovation.” Or maybe, to begin with – investment in order to at least provide people with housing, medical care and language courses? Otherwise, the productivity of this immigration will be zero.
Carney believes that the integration of immigrants will pass it is easy if they are provided with language courses and professional training. But what does it look like in reality in a country where, just a few years ago, they were talking about stability and prosperity? Doctors cannot see people, housing is unaffordable, and the country’s infrastructure is bursting at the seams. Carney promises to invest in support programs. But how shows the experience of his climate initiatives, investments – for now, these are just pretty numbers in PowerPoint.
Mark Carney is a banker who likes perfect charts, indicators, loud speeches. But it is obvious: he leaves behind not results, but ruins with presentations. His era as the head of the Bank of England is an example of how beautiful phrases can replace real actions, and mistakes can become strategic decisions.
Karni was the main preacher of the apocalypse ahead of Brexit. He convinced that Britain will face an economic collapse if it decides to leave the EU. And when the British voted “for exit”, Carney behaved like the captain of the ship, who even before the storm began to shout “everyone to the bottom!”.
Believing that salvation is in mass emission, Carney started the printing press, which only inflated inflation. But it’s like putting out a fire with gasoline. And when inflation skyrocketed, Carney left the Bank without ever explaining how it happened.
Carney kept the stakes low. But it’s like giving a teenager unlimited access to alcohol and hoping for a happy ending. British households found themselves in debt, consumer credit was impressively dynamic, and the economy was supported by cheap debt doping.
As a result, the country got a hypertrophied economy, where the amount of money supply did not correspond to the amount of real product. Inflation in Britain reached 11.1%, while in France it was 5.2%, and in Italy – 8%. Karna had an answer to this: “We did the right thing”.
Many remember the LDI crisis in 2022, when British pension funds found themselves on the verge of collapse due to the riskiest investments, while the bond market fell. It was the direct responsibility of the Bank of England to control these risks. But Carney was busy. For example, he decided which pronouns should be used by bank employees. Because this, of course, was much more important than the fact that people’s pensions would disappear.
Mark Carney looks the most organic in climate policy: there is a lot of rhetoric about a “bright future”, but for some reason there are only failed projects and disappointed faces around. His pride – the Net Zero Banking Alliance – began as a grandiose initiative, and ended an epic fail.
Carney created the NZBA with the pathos of a great reformer. The idea was beautiful: to unite the world’s largest banks to fight together for “carbon neutrality” by 2050. But it turns out that big business loves money more than abstract climate promises. One by one the banks started leave Alliance. JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley – the list of those who left the project looks like a catalog of the largest players in the global financial market.
The reasons are banal. First of all, political pressure, especially in the USA, where regulators began to ask: are these “green initiatives” not a violation of the principles of fair competition? Second, no one wants to lose profits by giving up profitable projects because of Carney’s idealistic dreams.
Carney is still trying to save his reputation by promising review climate policy in Canada. His plans include carbon neutrality, stimulation of “green” investments and support of environmental initiatives. But how to implement it if leading banks refuse to cooperate with it?
He dreams of saving the planet, but as experience shows, he often saves only his reputation. NZBA is an example of how global alliances are born at conferences and die in the real economy. And now this same Carney promises that “everything will be different” in Canada.
Mark Carney is a classic technocrat who believes that reality can be reduced to graphs, tables and strategic presentations. But big policy – not a place for Excel fanatics. It’s an arena where those who can hold a punch, talk to the crowd and improvise when the numbers crumble to dust win.
Carney is used to the impeccable logic of the financial world, where decisions are made based on models, forecasts and macroeconomic scenarios. And it looked pretty as long as the banks were concerned. But in big politics, where are the people are managed emotions, fears and whims, such logic works like a Swiss watch in hand-to-hand combat.
… Carney is a project of the elites, which creates the illusion of reliability, but behind the gloss of words hides the emptiness of actions. He talks about the economy in the language of reports, as if an Excel spreadsheet is a strategic map of Canada’s future. For Carney, trade wars are not a battle for millions of jobs, but another line in the financial forecast.
His idea of flexibility is to change the formula in the document, not to make a decision that will save people in a crisis. Politics requires the ability to react quickly, act contrary to patterns, sometimes even take risks. But is Carney ready for this? So far, his reactions do not resemble improvisation, but an attempt to convince that the delay is a strategy.
Protecting the economy with empty promises, fighting falling GDP with words of innovation, integrating immigrants through faceless programs is not a strategy, it is a fiction. This is an attempt to replace reality with formulas that look good on paper, but do not change anything in people’s lives. And while Carney clings to these fictions, the country remains unanswered: who is really ready to fight for its future?
Tetyana Viktorova
