Mark Carney

Wednesday November 28, 2012

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Wednesday November 28, 2012

A British Take on Mark Carney

Mark Carney, the new Governor of the Bank of England, is a remarkable man. He studied economics at Harvard, racked up a Master’s and a doctorate at Oxford, and, for the past four years, he’s been governor of his national bank – all before the age of 50. Carney is married to a glamorous British economist and has four lovely daughters. According to Time magazine, he’s one of the 25 most influential people in the world.

But – wait for it – there’s something even more remarkable about England’s new top banker. He’s a Canadian! Carney, he of the snappy suits and slicked-back hair, hails from the nation affectionately known as “America’s attic”. What’s more, he’s proud of it. He’s a maple syrup-drinking, poutine-loving, moose-spotting, beer-swilling ice-hockey fan, who once dreamed of playing for his local team, the Edmonton Oilers.

A couple of decades on, his selection for the coveted BoE job has raised a few eyebrows – not least because of his nationality. “Canadians have a reputation for being the boring good guys,” says Oxford academic (and bona fide Canadian) Margaret MacMillan. “If you want to say something is really tedious, you say ‘as dull as a Sunday in Canada’. We’ve never been loudly patriotic, probably because we live next to the US. As a result, people think we’re dull and quiet all the time.”

You see, even Canadians admit it: their country has an image problem. It has long been subjected to stereotypes – perpetuated by South Park and Due South – and rather than deny them, Canadians have simply got used to being the butt of bad jokes. “A Canadian,” goes the gag by the author Pierre Berton, “is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe.” (Source: The Telegraph) 

 

Saturday August 20, 2011

Saturday August 20, 2011Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday August 20, 2011

Flaherty, Carney take cautious tone on economy

Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney told MPs on Friday that the turmoil working its way through financial markets will bring uncertainty, but the bank is ready to deal with any problems.

Carney was speaking to the Commons finance committee, which had asked him and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to share their views on the outlook for Canada’s economy.

Jim FlahertyCarney took a cautious tone in his remarks, explaining that while there are many threats to growth, the central bank is monitoring developments closely and has not made any major changes to its outlook recently.

“The considerable headwinds are now blowing hard,” Carney said. “[But] the bank has a wide range of tools and policy options it will continue to employ [to deal with the crisis].”

Carney renewed his call for productivity improvements, noting that U.S. firms have invested heavily in becoming more productive while credit is comparatively cheap.

“Their actual investment in machinery and equipment is well above what’s happened in Canada,” he said.

He also said the Canadian dollar’s strength is compounding the current crisis for Canadian firms.

Inflation data released earlier Friday morning — which showed that Canada’s consumer price index fell to 2.7 per cent last month — is well within the parameters the central bank expected in its last monetary policy report, Carney said.  (Source: CBC News)

Wednesday February 11, 2009

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday February 11, 2009

Carney maintains his rosy outlook

Even as the economic horizon darkens, the man who controls the levers behind Canada’s performance is still predicting the economy will pick itself up off the floor starting later this year and stage a strong rebound in 2010.

Nearly alone among respected forecasters, Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney has said the combined efforts of Canada, the United States and other industrial nations to counteract the global recession will begin to turn things around here by late summer.

Asked yesterday by an opposition MP if the central bank was not out “on something of an optimistic limb” in its predictions, Carney told the Commons finance committee: “We don’t do optimism, we don’t do pessimism.

“We do realism at the Bank of Canada. We don’t do spin.”

Carney, 43, a former Goldman Sachs executive and finance department whiz kid, expressed full confidence in the bank’s number crunching.

It’s based on hundreds of interviews with business people, bank loans surveys and 21 economic forecasting models, he said.

Still, Carney tempered his relatively upbeat outlook by cautioning that all forecasts are “subject to an unusually high degree of uncertainty” now because of the speed and worldwide reach of the current economic downturn. (Source: Toronto Star)