The appointment of Mark Carney as governor of the Bank of England is a historic event. It is extraordinary – and admirable – that a country should choose to give its most important official position to a foreigner such as Mr Carney, even if Canadians are not very foreign and the governor-designate, with his English wife and connections, less so than most of his compatriots. Yet it is also both a surprise and a gamble. It is a surprise because Mr Carney, a widely respected governor of the Bank of Canada, did not – so far as I know – apply for the job. It is a gamble because a foreign national will be assuming a job that is inescapably political and, in the current difficult economic and financial circumstances of the UK, even more political than usual.
George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, deserves credit not only for choosing an exceptional person but for persuading him to take the job. Unquestionably, Mr Carney is a man of quality, with a broad background in economics, finance and central banking. In person, he is both brilliant and forceful. On one celebrated occasion, he engaged in a fierce row with Jamie Dimon, the redoubtable boss of JPMorgan – and held his ground.
Mr Carney has undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in economics from Harvard and Oxford. He worked for 13 years at Goldman Sachs. He has been governor of the Bank of Canada since 2008 and chairman of the Financial Stability Board since 2011, when Mario Draghi, another Goldman alumnus, left to become president of the European Central Bank. He has, not least, gained credit for the relatively robust performance of the Canadian economy during his period at its central bank. How far he is responsible for this happy outcome is unclear, as such things so often are.