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Chin up Mark! Photo: Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press. Click image to go to the source CBC page.[/caption]
Wow! Mark Carney seems too good to be true. Carney is the former Governor of the Bank of Canada who's just become the first ever non-Briton to head the Bank of England. He's only been on the job for one business week, and The Telegraph newspaper has already lauded his performance, saying an action he took together with European Central Bank President Mario Draghi "tore up the policy rule book" -- in a good way. All Governor Carney seems to have done was signal that interest rates would not be going up. Apparently, it was how he did it: plainly and transparently. Watever! The financial markets loved it. Earlier in the week the British people loved that Carney eschewed a chauffeur-driven ride to take the Tube to work in the City. It didn't hurt his "ooh wot a luverly man" rating when he missed his stop.
The 48-year-old Mark Joseph Carney was born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Canada, but he seems to have grown up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He earned degrees in economics at Harvard, and then went to work for the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs. He worked his way up company ranks for 13 years, and then, effectively, took a big pay cut to become a civil servant in the Canadian Government's Department of Finance. From 2003 to 2004, he joined the Bank of Canada as a deputy governor, but went back to Finance to serve as senior associate deputy minister of finance. By 2008 he had been a high-flyer in Finance under both Liberal, and Conservative governments.
From February, 2008 to June 2013, Mark Carney served as the eighth Governor of the Bank of Canada. He was credited with successfully steering Canada's economy through the global economic crisis which ran from 2007 through 2009 -- only a month into his term he issued an important rate cut, and later in 2009, used, what Wikipedia describes as a "nonstandard monetary tool: the 'conditional commitment.'" What I remember about his tenure as Gov' of the Bank of Canada was how direct, and plain-spoken he seemed, also, he was very young.
According to this interesting profile in the Star-Phoenix, Carney had been a managing director at Goldman for barely a year when he quit to become Canada's deputy bank governor in 2003. A bank director who knew the details, said Carney traded “at least $2 million a year,” for the governor,'s salary of $508,000 CAN. In the article, his friends describe him as being "obsessed with policy," a real policy wonk who believes in serving.
The Government of Canada doesn't knowingly headhunt fools, and neither does the United Kingdom. Mark Carney clearly knows his stuff. Great Britain is clearly hoping his made-in-Canada reputation is justified. England is part of Europe, after all, and can be dragged under by a wreck in the EU, or by some of it's own weak economic fundamentals. They need a decisive, sure hand on the economic tiller.
Mark Carney may even be a kind of game-changer; his skill and competence is trusted by both his peers, and by the financial markets. Couple that with his known ability to successfully apply unorthodox solutions, and you have a kind of mainstream radical who isn't afraid to break the rules when he thinks they need breaking. It seems a high-stakes gamble on the part of Great Britain, but that's what makes it all so interesting.
Chin up Mark! Photo: Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press. Click image to go to the source CBC page.[/caption]Wow! Mark Carney seems too good to be true. Carney is the former Governor of the Bank of Canada who's just become the first ever non-Briton to head the Bank of England. He's only been on the job for one business week, and The Telegraph newspaper has already lauded his performance, saying an action he took together with European Central Bank President Mario Draghi "tore up the policy rule book" -- in a good way. All Governor Carney seems to have done was signal that interest rates would not be going up. Apparently, it was how he did it: plainly and transparently. Watever! The financial markets loved it. Earlier in the week the British people loved that Carney eschewed a chauffeur-driven ride to take the Tube to work in the City. It didn't hurt his "ooh wot a luverly man" rating when he missed his stop.
The 48-year-old Mark Joseph Carney was born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Canada, but he seems to have grown up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He earned degrees in economics at Harvard, and then went to work for the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs. He worked his way up company ranks for 13 years, and then, effectively, took a big pay cut to become a civil servant in the Canadian Government's Department of Finance. From 2003 to 2004, he joined the Bank of Canada as a deputy governor, but went back to Finance to serve as senior associate deputy minister of finance. By 2008 he had been a high-flyer in Finance under both Liberal, and Conservative governments.
From February, 2008 to June 2013, Mark Carney served as the eighth Governor of the Bank of Canada. He was credited with successfully steering Canada's economy through the global economic crisis which ran from 2007 through 2009 -- only a month into his term he issued an important rate cut, and later in 2009, used, what Wikipedia describes as a "nonstandard monetary tool: the 'conditional commitment.'" What I remember about his tenure as Gov' of the Bank of Canada was how direct, and plain-spoken he seemed, also, he was very young.
According to this interesting profile in the Star-Phoenix, Carney had been a managing director at Goldman for barely a year when he quit to become Canada's deputy bank governor in 2003. A bank director who knew the details, said Carney traded “at least $2 million a year,” for the governor,'s salary of $508,000 CAN. In the article, his friends describe him as being "obsessed with policy," a real policy wonk who believes in serving.
The Government of Canada doesn't knowingly headhunt fools, and neither does the United Kingdom. Mark Carney clearly knows his stuff. Great Britain is clearly hoping his made-in-Canada reputation is justified. England is part of Europe, after all, and can be dragged under by a wreck in the EU, or by some of it's own weak economic fundamentals. They need a decisive, sure hand on the economic tiller.
Mark Carney may even be a kind of game-changer; his skill and competence is trusted by both his peers, and by the financial markets. Couple that with his known ability to successfully apply unorthodox solutions, and you have a kind of mainstream radical who isn't afraid to break the rules when he thinks they need breaking. It seems a high-stakes gamble on the part of Great Britain, but that's what makes it all so interesting.
How Mark Carney spent his first day deciding whom to put on the new £5 note ►
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