Why Mark Carney’s Canadian success story may be about to fall apart

No Bank of England governor has ever been installed in office with quite so much advance hype as Mark Carney. When he moves from running to the Bank of Canada to his new office in Threadneedle Street, expectations will be running high. Carney arrives with a reputation as a master of economic strategy, a man who can single-handedly steer an economy through the most treacherous of waters, and get a country growing again with a few deft strokes of monetary magic.

Certainly, George Osborne has invested his hopes in him. During Carney’s time as governor in Canada, the country was ‘acknowledged to have weathered the economic storm better than any other major western economy’, he said on announcing the appointment. Most of the financial commentators were happy to sing from the same hymn sheet. A brilliant technocrat, well worth the £874,000 a year the British taxpayer will pay him to run the economy, they chorused. No one has any doubt he is by far the best man for the job.

But is Carney really everything he is cracked up to be? Or is it that no one really knows very much about the Canadian economy — and certainly not enough to question how well it has performed since Carney was installed in 2008? Just as he is packing his bags, there are worrying signs that the Canadian economy is coming off the rails. Increasingly it looks as if he is getting out before it crashes. (more)

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