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- cross-posted to:
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The former Bank of England governor Mark Carney, a climate-focused economist who became the first non-Briton to run the Bank, is considering entering the race to replace Justin Trudeau as Canada’s prime minister.
Trudeau announced on Monday he would step down after nearly 10 years in power once his ruling Liberal party chose a new leader, throwing open the doors to a fierce party race before a general election later this year.
Carney, 59, in a statement quoted by Bloomberg, where he is a chair of the board of directors, said he would be “considering this decision closely with my family over the coming days”. A longtime and prominent member of the Liberal party, Carney said he was “encouraged” by the support of Liberal lawmakers and people “who want us to move forward with positive change and a winning economic plan”.
On the other hand, I think that’s the type of person who when working for the people could put forward policy to actually affect the situation.
Frankly the current liberals repeatedly stoked housing demand and didn’t significantly shift to increasing supply. I would hope an economist would focus on the right incentives for the market to drive demand.
This highlights a problem I foresee with a Carney PM - relying on market forces to fix housing. The market has no incentive in solving the supply shortage without massive intervention. Perhaps that’s what you’re envisioning when you say the right incentives. In the past this problem has been successfully tackled centrally. E.g. council houses in the UK.
I think there’s only two ways out: do something massive and the government directly builds and forces hands, or the government steps in and gets developers to actually build by e.g. giving our preferred interest free loans and building bonds.
Ideally we get both so that if the market don’t play ball the gov can undercut them with no profit motive.
Carney leans left so he’d likely go the government-built route.
Herein lies an issue: the fact that he’s an economist doesn’t mean that he’s in for the economics of the greater good. And the fact that he himself has a few strong beliefs on what the economic solutions should be, doesn’t mean he’ll actually make them happen.
There is criticism in the economics community lately, Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton published a scathing critique of the field that has garnered a lot of discussion https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/03/Symposium-Rethinking-Economics-Angus-Deaton
I hope that means economists are seriously reevaluating how and what they communicate especially for policy and government.
I don’t think your criticism applies to just Carney, you can apply that argument to every politician.
He sure was when he headed the BoC during the 2008 crash.
If you remember he never once handed out useless platitudes or treated Canadians like they were stupid.
Easier to do when you’re not an elected official.
He spoke to us often during that time. Never lied or glossed over the dangers once.