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Value(s): Building a Better World for All
A bold, urgent argument on the misplacement of value in financial markets and how we can and need to maximize value for the many, not few.
As an economist and former banker, Mark Carney has spent his life in various financial roles, in both the public and private sector. VALUE(S) is a meditation on his experiences that examines the short-comings and challenges of the market in the past decade which he argues has led to rampant, public distrust and the need for radical change.
Focusing on four major crises-the Global Financial Crisis, the Global Health Crisis, Climate Change and the 4th Industrial Revolution-- Carney proposes responses to each. His solutions are tangible action plans for leaders, companies and countries to transform the value of the market back into the value of humanity.
As an economist and former banker, Mark Carney has spent his life in various financial roles, in both the public and private sector. VALUE(S) is a meditation on his experiences that examines the short-comings and challenges of the market in the past decade which he argues has led to rampant, public distrust and the need for radical change.
Focusing on four major crises-the Global Financial Crisis, the Global Health Crisis, Climate Change and the 4th Industrial Revolution-- Carney proposes responses to each. His solutions are tangible action plans for leaders, companies and countries to transform the value of the market back into the value of humanity.
608 pages, Hardcover
First published May 25, 2021
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May 2, 2021
Mark Carney is no longer the Governor of the Bank of England or of the Bank of Canada. So a fat book by him should be expected to explain his real thoughts, not the stilted public statements of officialese, and his real reactions to people and events, not the politically shackled statements designed to reveal nothing. His book Value(s) makes it seem as if he was still in office as a central banker.
The basic principle is that value, ie. a dollar, pound or euro amount, is being confused and confounded with values, which are societal, and not monetary. He summarizes it this way: “In recent decades, subtly but relentlessly, we have been moving from a market economy to a market society. Increasingly, to be valued, an asset or activity has to be in a market; the price of everything is becoming the value of everything.”
He keeps to that theme pretty much throughout, but it becomes endlessly repetitive once you understand how he thinks. He thinks like a bureaucrat.
Carney loves citing the wisdom of others, and many of the numerous quotes throughout the book are worth highlighting. He does a much better job than most in picking relevant and eloquent citations. But his own wisdom seems to be limited to breaking down every topic to its smallest units, then measuring, recording and reporting them up the chain, so that they might provide value to those who might actually have a plan of action.
His thirst for knowledge is also impressive. Central bankers (thankfully) want a handle on everything in the economy. And the economy includes pretty much everything. Heading up a central bank means you get all the original research from anywhere you want, the actual unvarnished truth of the matter. So Carney can tell you that a study by Statistics Norway during the COVI19 pandemic estimated that school closures cost $173 per child per day in lost future earnings and lost parental productivity.
There are two chapters on COVID19 as well the financial crisis, and two on climate change as well as the gold standard. Carney likes to think (or perhaps hopes) he has not lost the common touch, talking to shop owners and students as well as heads of state and other central bankers. The book ends with a chapter on humility. He says “A sense of self must be accompanied by s sense of solidarity.”
Early on, he sets out the three lies of markets: This time is different, markets are always right/clear, and markets are moral. These lies play out in several chapters on different topics. Central bankers have not figured out the universal law to success or even stability. They are constantly reacting to events. They are constantly surprised by events. And although he doesn’t go there, they are constantly fighting today’s battles with yesterday’s new tools, designed for the last crisis, which was completely different. But through it all, the three lies continue to come back to bite the economies of countries again and again. Every ten years or so. It’s astonishing, even to Carney. Bankers never learn, and as soon as things settle down and the economy picks up, bankers start taking forbidden chances again. They succeed for a while, he says, and the economy appears to benefit, so regulators and politicians back off. Until it all blows up again. And it always boils down to these same three lies the whole finance world knows so well.
Readers might think Carney is therefore not sold on market economies, but he totally is. Despite their unending attempts to monetize values, their continual skirting of regulations to produce the next banking crisis, and the endless greed they routinely qualify as virtue, Carney understands their power to build, innovate, and of course, fund. This, like everything in the book, is not in the least controversial.
Despite knowing and working with the who’s who of finance, Carney is not about to criticize anyone else. Even for Alan Greenspan, whose hands-off administration led The Great Moderation of supposedly endless stability to the great financial crisis of 2008 (which for some has still not ended), Carney has no critique. The farthest he goes is to quote Greenspan himself at a congressional hearing where he admitted to being “partially wrong” after seeing the incredible greed of Wall Street in action. Otherwise, everything’s good.
Carney is forgiving of pretty much everything. Banking, finance and economics are continually evolving. What was true when we were on the gold standard is not true today. Rules made yesterday will need revising tomorrow. All the errors are forgivable.
Except one.
By far the most negative and critical chapter in the book is about cryptocurrencies. These are apparently evil incarnate. Carney basically has nothing good to say about them. They are not authorized, not regulated, not bound by nations, central banks or governments. They offer no guarantees, no oversight and no submission to rules other than their own. They don’t scale and aren’t universally available. They will never replace currencies, which do offer all of the above, and anyway, today’s currencies are more and more global and digital every day, so cryptocurrencies offer little or nothing over central bank-issued real money. A crypto coin from a central bank offers nothing for Mark Carney. In his own words:
“It must improve fairness by increasing financial inclusion and promoting solidarity. New forms of money and payments must make good on their potential to democratise financial services by opening access to all. That means dramatically lowering the costs of payments, banking and cross-border transactions including remittances. And it means promoting competition for customer services. All network externalities in new forms of money should accrue to the benefit of the public…New payment systems must be scalable. After all, money is a social convention, a network. The more people that use it, the more useful it is. To be effective, the forms of money must be at least as efficient at large scale as they are at smaller ones. At present, this is a marked deficiency of most crypto-substitutes.
“Once they are brought into the regulatory net – as all forms of money eventually are – their attractiveness to many of their core users will cease.“
This is as dramatic as the book gets, and it is all focused on digital coins. He does not apply anything like this passion or criticism to anything else. Bizarrely, he does not accord to crypto the forgiveness he offers on every disaster in economic history. Unlike everything else, they will apparently never evolve from where they are today. Unlike, say, the pound, which was under his control and which he says, has suffered inflation of 2200% just in our lifetime. The chapter on cryptocurrencies seems condescending, inadequate, and demonstrates not so much analysis as contempt for the whole movement.
Back on terra firma, Carney offers five lessons from the financial crisis of 2008:
-The market can be wrong longer than you can stay solvent
-Hope is not a strategy and to quote Tim Geithner’s refrain plan beats no plan. And a plan that is actually executed is the best one of all. Searching endlessly for the best is the enemy of the good.
-Communicate clearly, frequently and honestly
-There are no libertarians in financial crises.
-Overwhelming force is the best way to restore confidence.
This brings up the unbelievable number of lists in the book. There seems to be one on every other page. They get to Carney’s modus operandi of breaking things down and listing the component parts. Everything can be reduced to three, four or five points, with a couple of sevens in there along the way. He applies this to everything. It can be instructive, but after a hundred of them, it becomes routine and wearying. And most of them are not nearly as insightful as the financial crisis points above.
Value(s) has two chapters on climate change, but neither one contains any thoughts on how to tame it. Instead, they are about bureaucratic process and ESG, the new rating system for companies to rate themselves on environmental, social and governance issues like diversity.
What are central banks doing? “Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), a coalition of seventy central banks, representing countries that generate almost three-quarters of the world’s emissions, have developed representative scenarios to show how climate risks might evolve and affect the real and financial economies.” They’re modeling.
What does Carney recommend for lawmakers? “Credible policy frameworks reduce the risk that businesses form wrong expectations about future policies and continue to invest in obsolete technologies. By setting out clear strategies, politicians can provide forward guidance on the policies they plan to put in place. Such predictability of climate policy helps companies start adjusting to the reality of a net-zero world today, and ensures that this adjustment is orderly.” More modeling.
His most memorable thoughts on climate are two small anecdotes. Carney says he received Greta Thunberg one day at the Bank of England. He took her downstairs to show her the hundreds of millions of pounds worth of gold stored there. That she was unimpressed would be a good British understatement. Carney simply says Thunberg has a way of keeping you focused on her issue.
Then in the USA, Carney cites the head of Morgan Stanley, James Gorman, answering a question in congressional testimony about “whether climate change really was a risk to financial stability: ‘It’s hard to have a financial system if you don’t have a planet.’”
That’s better than everything else in both chapters combined.
But Carney is not deterred. In his love of lists and process, he says: “There are a variety of ways to calculate the warming impact across equities, corporate bonds and sovereign bonds and then to combine them into a single ‘portfolio’ score. They have three steps in common:
1) allocating carbon budgets and translating them into benchmarks;
2) assessing company-level alignment relative to these benchmarks; and
3) aggregating the results to a portfolio level to assess portfolio alignment.”
James Gorman was better.
The book seems to be built on three verbs: need, should, and must. Carney is all about bankers and governments needing to do this and that. But the verbs are not followed by solutions. Carney’s needs and musts are about putting structure in place to analyze the effects of solutions should anyone come up with them. He himself has none. Here’s an example of what readers will encounter again and again, which they eventually realize are not so much profound as meaningless:
“Advancing patriotism by reinstilling common purpose, ideals and values in global affairs is integral to country strategies that build opportunities for all. We need a new form of international integration, one that is focused on outcomes, that maintains values and preserves sovereignty in its truest sense. That is the highest example of institutions adapting to achieve their purpose.”
Central bankers live in a closed world that can be fascinating. Carney tells of his time in the UK, where choosing who to put on pound notes and coins, the colors used on the notes, the polymer paper – all finely figure into the requirement to make the bank appear substantial, stable and reliable. Banking, now that there is no gold backing money, is a confidence game. As long as everyone believes there will always be a Bank of England, and that it is run by enormously careful and skilled technocrats, the pound, and the economy, are safe. Any thought to the contrary must be avoided, denied or expunged.
Along the same lines: “We have learned that talking about ‘prices and jobs’ is far more effective than the economic jargon of inflation and employment.” Central bankers recognize their audience. It just means banks will continue to be bailed out, currencies will continue to be manipulated, and debt will continue to rise. Because that’s how they build confidence in money.
This is the kind of insight I wanted to read more of, but what I have referenced here is pretty much all there is in the book.
I was rather hoping Value(s) would be a seat at the central bankers’ table. It is everything but. And flat to boot.
David Wineberg
The basic principle is that value, ie. a dollar, pound or euro amount, is being confused and confounded with values, which are societal, and not monetary. He summarizes it this way: “In recent decades, subtly but relentlessly, we have been moving from a market economy to a market society. Increasingly, to be valued, an asset or activity has to be in a market; the price of everything is becoming the value of everything.”
He keeps to that theme pretty much throughout, but it becomes endlessly repetitive once you understand how he thinks. He thinks like a bureaucrat.
Carney loves citing the wisdom of others, and many of the numerous quotes throughout the book are worth highlighting. He does a much better job than most in picking relevant and eloquent citations. But his own wisdom seems to be limited to breaking down every topic to its smallest units, then measuring, recording and reporting them up the chain, so that they might provide value to those who might actually have a plan of action.
His thirst for knowledge is also impressive. Central bankers (thankfully) want a handle on everything in the economy. And the economy includes pretty much everything. Heading up a central bank means you get all the original research from anywhere you want, the actual unvarnished truth of the matter. So Carney can tell you that a study by Statistics Norway during the COVI19 pandemic estimated that school closures cost $173 per child per day in lost future earnings and lost parental productivity.
There are two chapters on COVID19 as well the financial crisis, and two on climate change as well as the gold standard. Carney likes to think (or perhaps hopes) he has not lost the common touch, talking to shop owners and students as well as heads of state and other central bankers. The book ends with a chapter on humility. He says “A sense of self must be accompanied by s sense of solidarity.”
Early on, he sets out the three lies of markets: This time is different, markets are always right/clear, and markets are moral. These lies play out in several chapters on different topics. Central bankers have not figured out the universal law to success or even stability. They are constantly reacting to events. They are constantly surprised by events. And although he doesn’t go there, they are constantly fighting today’s battles with yesterday’s new tools, designed for the last crisis, which was completely different. But through it all, the three lies continue to come back to bite the economies of countries again and again. Every ten years or so. It’s astonishing, even to Carney. Bankers never learn, and as soon as things settle down and the economy picks up, bankers start taking forbidden chances again. They succeed for a while, he says, and the economy appears to benefit, so regulators and politicians back off. Until it all blows up again. And it always boils down to these same three lies the whole finance world knows so well.
Readers might think Carney is therefore not sold on market economies, but he totally is. Despite their unending attempts to monetize values, their continual skirting of regulations to produce the next banking crisis, and the endless greed they routinely qualify as virtue, Carney understands their power to build, innovate, and of course, fund. This, like everything in the book, is not in the least controversial.
Despite knowing and working with the who’s who of finance, Carney is not about to criticize anyone else. Even for Alan Greenspan, whose hands-off administration led The Great Moderation of supposedly endless stability to the great financial crisis of 2008 (which for some has still not ended), Carney has no critique. The farthest he goes is to quote Greenspan himself at a congressional hearing where he admitted to being “partially wrong” after seeing the incredible greed of Wall Street in action. Otherwise, everything’s good.
Carney is forgiving of pretty much everything. Banking, finance and economics are continually evolving. What was true when we were on the gold standard is not true today. Rules made yesterday will need revising tomorrow. All the errors are forgivable.
Except one.
By far the most negative and critical chapter in the book is about cryptocurrencies. These are apparently evil incarnate. Carney basically has nothing good to say about them. They are not authorized, not regulated, not bound by nations, central banks or governments. They offer no guarantees, no oversight and no submission to rules other than their own. They don’t scale and aren’t universally available. They will never replace currencies, which do offer all of the above, and anyway, today’s currencies are more and more global and digital every day, so cryptocurrencies offer little or nothing over central bank-issued real money. A crypto coin from a central bank offers nothing for Mark Carney. In his own words:
“It must improve fairness by increasing financial inclusion and promoting solidarity. New forms of money and payments must make good on their potential to democratise financial services by opening access to all. That means dramatically lowering the costs of payments, banking and cross-border transactions including remittances. And it means promoting competition for customer services. All network externalities in new forms of money should accrue to the benefit of the public…New payment systems must be scalable. After all, money is a social convention, a network. The more people that use it, the more useful it is. To be effective, the forms of money must be at least as efficient at large scale as they are at smaller ones. At present, this is a marked deficiency of most crypto-substitutes.
“Once they are brought into the regulatory net – as all forms of money eventually are – their attractiveness to many of their core users will cease.“
This is as dramatic as the book gets, and it is all focused on digital coins. He does not apply anything like this passion or criticism to anything else. Bizarrely, he does not accord to crypto the forgiveness he offers on every disaster in economic history. Unlike everything else, they will apparently never evolve from where they are today. Unlike, say, the pound, which was under his control and which he says, has suffered inflation of 2200% just in our lifetime. The chapter on cryptocurrencies seems condescending, inadequate, and demonstrates not so much analysis as contempt for the whole movement.
Back on terra firma, Carney offers five lessons from the financial crisis of 2008:
-The market can be wrong longer than you can stay solvent
-Hope is not a strategy and to quote Tim Geithner’s refrain plan beats no plan. And a plan that is actually executed is the best one of all. Searching endlessly for the best is the enemy of the good.
-Communicate clearly, frequently and honestly
-There are no libertarians in financial crises.
-Overwhelming force is the best way to restore confidence.
This brings up the unbelievable number of lists in the book. There seems to be one on every other page. They get to Carney’s modus operandi of breaking things down and listing the component parts. Everything can be reduced to three, four or five points, with a couple of sevens in there along the way. He applies this to everything. It can be instructive, but after a hundred of them, it becomes routine and wearying. And most of them are not nearly as insightful as the financial crisis points above.
Value(s) has two chapters on climate change, but neither one contains any thoughts on how to tame it. Instead, they are about bureaucratic process and ESG, the new rating system for companies to rate themselves on environmental, social and governance issues like diversity.
What are central banks doing? “Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), a coalition of seventy central banks, representing countries that generate almost three-quarters of the world’s emissions, have developed representative scenarios to show how climate risks might evolve and affect the real and financial economies.” They’re modeling.
What does Carney recommend for lawmakers? “Credible policy frameworks reduce the risk that businesses form wrong expectations about future policies and continue to invest in obsolete technologies. By setting out clear strategies, politicians can provide forward guidance on the policies they plan to put in place. Such predictability of climate policy helps companies start adjusting to the reality of a net-zero world today, and ensures that this adjustment is orderly.” More modeling.
His most memorable thoughts on climate are two small anecdotes. Carney says he received Greta Thunberg one day at the Bank of England. He took her downstairs to show her the hundreds of millions of pounds worth of gold stored there. That she was unimpressed would be a good British understatement. Carney simply says Thunberg has a way of keeping you focused on her issue.
Then in the USA, Carney cites the head of Morgan Stanley, James Gorman, answering a question in congressional testimony about “whether climate change really was a risk to financial stability: ‘It’s hard to have a financial system if you don’t have a planet.’”
That’s better than everything else in both chapters combined.
But Carney is not deterred. In his love of lists and process, he says: “There are a variety of ways to calculate the warming impact across equities, corporate bonds and sovereign bonds and then to combine them into a single ‘portfolio’ score. They have three steps in common:
1) allocating carbon budgets and translating them into benchmarks;
2) assessing company-level alignment relative to these benchmarks; and
3) aggregating the results to a portfolio level to assess portfolio alignment.”
James Gorman was better.
The book seems to be built on three verbs: need, should, and must. Carney is all about bankers and governments needing to do this and that. But the verbs are not followed by solutions. Carney’s needs and musts are about putting structure in place to analyze the effects of solutions should anyone come up with them. He himself has none. Here’s an example of what readers will encounter again and again, which they eventually realize are not so much profound as meaningless:
“Advancing patriotism by reinstilling common purpose, ideals and values in global affairs is integral to country strategies that build opportunities for all. We need a new form of international integration, one that is focused on outcomes, that maintains values and preserves sovereignty in its truest sense. That is the highest example of institutions adapting to achieve their purpose.”
Central bankers live in a closed world that can be fascinating. Carney tells of his time in the UK, where choosing who to put on pound notes and coins, the colors used on the notes, the polymer paper – all finely figure into the requirement to make the bank appear substantial, stable and reliable. Banking, now that there is no gold backing money, is a confidence game. As long as everyone believes there will always be a Bank of England, and that it is run by enormously careful and skilled technocrats, the pound, and the economy, are safe. Any thought to the contrary must be avoided, denied or expunged.
Along the same lines: “We have learned that talking about ‘prices and jobs’ is far more effective than the economic jargon of inflation and employment.” Central bankers recognize their audience. It just means banks will continue to be bailed out, currencies will continue to be manipulated, and debt will continue to rise. Because that’s how they build confidence in money.
This is the kind of insight I wanted to read more of, but what I have referenced here is pretty much all there is in the book.
I was rather hoping Value(s) would be a seat at the central bankers’ table. It is everything but. And flat to boot.
David Wineberg
April 7, 2021
The reason I brought this book was the author, the handful of books I have read on economics are largely written by academics and journalists, who are merely observers. Mark Carney in his role as Governor of the Bank of Canada, and more recently the Bank of England, has lived and influenced our current financial system and has had a fount row seat for significant events, such as the financial crisis and Brexit.
Unfortunately, the book is let down by the author; it is overly long and in places very dry, it's also quite jarringly self-aggrandizing (despite preaching the importance of humility on a number of occasions).
Where this book shines is when it is illuminating the flaws in our financial system, particularly those related to climate change and COVID 19 related inequalities, and in highlighting the need for urgent action. We also get, if you have the patience, a very informed and in depth explanation of why the 2008 financial crises happened.
Carney, however, falls short of condemning perpetual growth or 'the market' and instead offers (at length and not massively convincing) ways in which markets can be made to, or will make themselves, work more in our favour. In the end, Carney recognises that capitalism is sick and no longer fit for purpose, pulls out his gun, but stops short of pulling the trigger.
Unfortunately, the book is let down by the author; it is overly long and in places very dry, it's also quite jarringly self-aggrandizing (despite preaching the importance of humility on a number of occasions).
Where this book shines is when it is illuminating the flaws in our financial system, particularly those related to climate change and COVID 19 related inequalities, and in highlighting the need for urgent action. We also get, if you have the patience, a very informed and in depth explanation of why the 2008 financial crises happened.
Carney, however, falls short of condemning perpetual growth or 'the market' and instead offers (at length and not massively convincing) ways in which markets can be made to, or will make themselves, work more in our favour. In the end, Carney recognises that capitalism is sick and no longer fit for purpose, pulls out his gun, but stops short of pulling the trigger.
March 17, 2021
“A fool is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”.
Central banker Mark Carney has diagnosed a crisis in value(s). He doesn’t just mean prices being misaligned with values as in frothy asset overvaluations. That’s just a symptom of a deeper malaise. The central idea of his book, says the Toronto Star’s Heather Scoffield, is that “… the world has devolved into a harsh, crisis-prone place by putting a monetary value or price on pretty much everything, and that erodes the societal values that hold the world together.”
“We have moved from a market economy to a market society, and this is now undermining our basic social contract of relative equality of outcomes, equality of opportunity and fairness across generations.”
Says Carney and finds himself asking: “Can the very act of valuation shape our values and constrain our choices?” Carney endorses Michael Sandel’s observation that commodification can corrode the value of what is being priced. Carney’s reflections chime with the Covid-induced re-appreciation of underpaid essential services, disenchantment with neoliberal marketisation and the rediscovery of the commons and the state.Like Sandel, Carney wants “moral sentiments” to reassert themselves over the invisible hand which seems to have strayed off conducting commerce into primarily pleasuring punters. Unlike Mariana Mazzucato who first managed to float “value” into the mainstream conversation, Carney does not focus on the “unearned” earnings and extractions of financialised rentier capitalism. Mazzucato daringly suggested that, as Martin Wolf’s put it, “it is far too easy for those operating in the market economy to get rich by extracting value from those who actually create it”. Carney prefers not to re-engage with classical economics 101 : what creates value? That’s probably wise as it might have pushed him off the moral pulpit into the vacuous abyss of real existing zombie Macro. As Doyne Farmer reminds us,
“Economists have struggled with this question (of value) for several centuries and have largely given up – most modern economists tacitly assert that price and value are the same thing, except for possible “externalities” that prevent the market system from functioning correctly.”
Mainstreamers love to laugh at Marxist abstract labour but no one has ever managed to count utils, either. Marginal utility is an operational tautology. It’s like accountants’ fairy dust to make oneself believe one has an equation involving independent variables when all one ever had was prices. But never mind. If in practice one owns the academy one has no need for theory.
Carney falls short on theory but his plethora of pragmatic proposals are well worth perusal. Especially by the powers that be, perhaps?
caw blogs at https://gaiageld.com/
Central banker Mark Carney has diagnosed a crisis in value(s). He doesn’t just mean prices being misaligned with values as in frothy asset overvaluations. That’s just a symptom of a deeper malaise. The central idea of his book, says the Toronto Star’s Heather Scoffield, is that “… the world has devolved into a harsh, crisis-prone place by putting a monetary value or price on pretty much everything, and that erodes the societal values that hold the world together.”
“We have moved from a market economy to a market society, and this is now undermining our basic social contract of relative equality of outcomes, equality of opportunity and fairness across generations.”
Says Carney and finds himself asking: “Can the very act of valuation shape our values and constrain our choices?” Carney endorses Michael Sandel’s observation that commodification can corrode the value of what is being priced. Carney’s reflections chime with the Covid-induced re-appreciation of underpaid essential services, disenchantment with neoliberal marketisation and the rediscovery of the commons and the state.Like Sandel, Carney wants “moral sentiments” to reassert themselves over the invisible hand which seems to have strayed off conducting commerce into primarily pleasuring punters. Unlike Mariana Mazzucato who first managed to float “value” into the mainstream conversation, Carney does not focus on the “unearned” earnings and extractions of financialised rentier capitalism. Mazzucato daringly suggested that, as Martin Wolf’s put it, “it is far too easy for those operating in the market economy to get rich by extracting value from those who actually create it”. Carney prefers not to re-engage with classical economics 101 : what creates value? That’s probably wise as it might have pushed him off the moral pulpit into the vacuous abyss of real existing zombie Macro. As Doyne Farmer reminds us,
“Economists have struggled with this question (of value) for several centuries and have largely given up – most modern economists tacitly assert that price and value are the same thing, except for possible “externalities” that prevent the market system from functioning correctly.”
Mainstreamers love to laugh at Marxist abstract labour but no one has ever managed to count utils, either. Marginal utility is an operational tautology. It’s like accountants’ fairy dust to make oneself believe one has an equation involving independent variables when all one ever had was prices. But never mind. If in practice one owns the academy one has no need for theory.
Carney falls short on theory but his plethora of pragmatic proposals are well worth perusal. Especially by the powers that be, perhaps?
caw blogs at https://gaiageld.com/
March 29, 2021
This book was, for a non-economist and small-time investor, a tough slog. I'm not in a good position to judge Carney's economic or business insight. But what I loved is how he constantly pulls his readers back to basics--to the values we live for and by. He points out in many ways that these values don't always align with profitability for a few or elites. He worries that some of the most important things in this world are not valued at all, economically--reefs, forests, fresh water, social capital, and so on. And he discusses, at length, the fiscal and political struggles we will have to engage in to overcome COVID wreckage and Climate Change--not to mention assorted fiscal crises we constantly invite through poor or de- regulation and transparency.
I think this might be his "coming out" book as a politician. He's no conservative capitalist, that's for sure. But he is a capitalist, a person who wants markets to work for the betterment of all society, rather than for a few. He's going to be an interesting guy to watch. Is the future of the liberal party either Carney or Freeland? I bet it is.
I think this might be his "coming out" book as a politician. He's no conservative capitalist, that's for sure. But he is a capitalist, a person who wants markets to work for the betterment of all society, rather than for a few. He's going to be an interesting guy to watch. Is the future of the liberal party either Carney or Freeland? I bet it is.
December 30, 2023
چه چیزی ارزش را در اقتصاد تعیین میکند؟ آیا ارزش یک موضوع عینی است یا ذهنی؟ به نظر شما آیا بین بازار و اخلاق توزان مناسبی برقرار است؟ آیا ایدئولوژی سودگرایانه قرون ۲۱ام و بنیادگرایی بازار تأثیر مخربی روی ارزشهای دموکراتیک و انسانی جوامع داشته است؟
مارک کارنی (Mark Carney)، اقتصاددان برجسته کانادایی که سابقه ریاست بانکهای مرکزی کانادا و انگلستان را دارد در بخش اول کتاب جدیدش «ارزشها» به این سؤالات مهم و چالشبرانگیز اقتصادی پرداخته است. کارنی در بخش دوم کتابش، نشان میدهد یکی از مهمترین ریشههای بحرانهایی مثل رکود سال ۲۰۰۸، پاندمی کرونا و تغییرات اقلیمی چیزی نیست جز همین غلبه ارزشهای پولی بر سایر ارزشهای انسانی.
مارک کارنی (Mark Carney)، اقتصاددان برجسته کانادایی که سابقه ریاست بانکهای مرکزی کانادا و انگلستان را دارد در بخش اول کتاب جدیدش «ارزشها» به این سؤالات مهم و چالشبرانگیز اقتصادی پرداخته است. کارنی در بخش دوم کتابش، نشان میدهد یکی از مهمترین ریشههای بحرانهایی مثل رکود سال ۲۰۰۸، پاندمی کرونا و تغییرات اقلیمی چیزی نیست جز همین غلبه ارزشهای پولی بر سایر ارزشهای انسانی.
February 20, 2022
In theory I should have found this super interesting. Covered a whole bunch of things I'm interested in and the ways they intersect. Unfortunately, I just could not get into it. Kept zoning out, getting irritated with Carney's writing style, and I don't think there were any points or ideas that really grabbed me or added anything new to my way of thinking about things. The main thing I seem to have gained from this book is a newfound hatred of the word 'dynamism'. I enjoyed the personal anecdotes a lot more than the rambly pontificating and excessive repetition of lists of values, although I did appreciate the section on humility's focus on the fallacy of meritocracy.
Anyway I couldn't in good conscience give this more than 2/5 because it basically just bored me, but I can appreciate that this might be one of those books where actually other people gain a lot more from it than I do and I just didn't really get on with the writing style.
Anyway I couldn't in good conscience give this more than 2/5 because it basically just bored me, but I can appreciate that this might be one of those books where actually other people gain a lot more from it than I do and I just didn't really get on with the writing style.
May 4, 2021
3.5 / 5
I got this book from the library thinking it would be a quick, interesting read. My interest was based on the numerous discussions about Carney going on in Canadian political circles these days.
While the book is indeed interesting to read it is not quick to get through. Not by a long shot.
I have no doubt Mr. Carney will lose some readers in the first few chapters, which are abstract and - quite honestly - a bit dull.
The dull beginning, however, is offset by a strong middle portion and an outstanding final (short!) chapter on "Humility". If you read only one portion of this book, I think that last chapter should be it.
The penultimate chapter preceding the aforementioned one is supposedly about Canada ("How Canada Can Build Value for All"), but strangely Canada itself is not mentioned all that much in the chapter. There are some passing references to Canadian society present as well as a couple Canadian social policies used as examples to tie into the concepts being discussed, but those are few and far between. It was almost as if the author decided near the end of the book's editing process that he wanted to connect the book a little more to his home and native land, so he arbitrarily chose that chapter in particular to park some Canadian references in.
I digress. Its not a bad chapter by any means, but, like some other stretches of this book, seems like it could have used a strong editor to give it cohesion.
Overall, the book has a lot to say on the three Cs: Climate Change, Credit and COVID-19. When discussing the three topics in tandem, it is undoubtedly at its most compelling for the casual reader.
Mr. Carney is clearly a smart, articulate guy. He relies a little too much on bullet-points and numbered lists for my personal taste, but this book is nonetheless both well-written and well-researched. In fact, I jotted down some interesting books and articles that are referenced in the endnotes section for my own interest.
If anything, the book makes me excited to see what Mr. Carney tackles next. It could be the long-rumoured entry into federal politics in Canada, or something else.
I do recommend this book, just not lightly. It is a really good 500+ page book that could probably have been a great <400 page book.
I got this book from the library thinking it would be a quick, interesting read. My interest was based on the numerous discussions about Carney going on in Canadian political circles these days.
While the book is indeed interesting to read it is not quick to get through. Not by a long shot.
I have no doubt Mr. Carney will lose some readers in the first few chapters, which are abstract and - quite honestly - a bit dull.
The dull beginning, however, is offset by a strong middle portion and an outstanding final (short!) chapter on "Humility". If you read only one portion of this book, I think that last chapter should be it.
The penultimate chapter preceding the aforementioned one is supposedly about Canada ("How Canada Can Build Value for All"), but strangely Canada itself is not mentioned all that much in the chapter. There are some passing references to Canadian society present as well as a couple Canadian social policies used as examples to tie into the concepts being discussed, but those are few and far between. It was almost as if the author decided near the end of the book's editing process that he wanted to connect the book a little more to his home and native land, so he arbitrarily chose that chapter in particular to park some Canadian references in.
I digress. Its not a bad chapter by any means, but, like some other stretches of this book, seems like it could have used a strong editor to give it cohesion.
Overall, the book has a lot to say on the three Cs: Climate Change, Credit and COVID-19. When discussing the three topics in tandem, it is undoubtedly at its most compelling for the casual reader.
Mr. Carney is clearly a smart, articulate guy. He relies a little too much on bullet-points and numbered lists for my personal taste, but this book is nonetheless both well-written and well-researched. In fact, I jotted down some interesting books and articles that are referenced in the endnotes section for my own interest.
If anything, the book makes me excited to see what Mr. Carney tackles next. It could be the long-rumoured entry into federal politics in Canada, or something else.
I do recommend this book, just not lightly. It is a really good 500+ page book that could probably have been a great <400 page book.
May 24, 2021
Really hard work - like reading a PhD thesis on finance and economics. You've really got to know your stuff to make this a worthwhile read. For the layman, dry and hard work I'm afraid.
January 20, 2022
Read like a PhD thesis - but a lot more interesting...
July 22, 2022
Gives self-help books a run for their money in terms of airy, repetitious, imprecise waffle. However, Carney does more than Polonius as there is an overarching point to the unimaginative and relentless soliloquizing: monetary and ethical values are misaligned, leading to issues such as global warming, which do not carry an immediate economic imperative, being sidelined. This can be improved by setting clear standards/having a clear values, having clear goals which businesses are accountable to, and impact investing/promoting ESG centric policies
Soul enriching passage at the rear detailing how one should follow one's values and sense of fun when deciding upon a career/job to be more fulfilled. Glad to see the final page finally come around
Soul enriching passage at the rear detailing how one should follow one's values and sense of fun when deciding upon a career/job to be more fulfilled. Glad to see the final page finally come around
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 1, 2022
What exactly is on the mind of the Davos-going Laurentian elite these days? Let Mark Carney, the former Governor of both the Banks of England and Canada and the current UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance, tell you what the global good want to do. In his view, “the values of the market are usurping those of humanity, sustainability, resilience, solidarity and responsibility.” This book, written for the United Nations COP 26 summit on climate change, looks at the financial crisis of 2008, the Covid 19 pandemic, and the climate crisis: how they came about, what weaknesses of governance and finance they revealed, and how we can fix the problems that ail us.
To start with the weaknesses of the book, it is loosely organized and meandering. Carney was under a Covid 19 lockdown, and it seems like he just decided to write something. The subtitle betrays it: "Climate, Credit, Covid and How We Focus on What Matters." That is a lot to cover. He should “Focus on What Matters,” develop a more focused thesis, argue it closely, and jettison about 1/3 to ½ of this book. There is a lot of technocratese, a bewildering plethora of acronyms, “The IFRS process includes all the major sustainability standards including GRL, TCFD, and SASB.” Parts of this read like an economics textbook: what is value, what is objective value, what is relative value, how markets create value. We get a history of money, central banks, and the Bank of England, the value of humility, what true leadership is, and many of the lessons Carney learned operating at a very high level in the world financial system. I don’t think all of this is necessary.
Carney says that price and value are not the same, but we think they are. We have a problem of market fundamentalism, building a market society rather than a market economy. Amazon is worth 1.5 billion dollars, but the Amazon rainforest is worth nothing. We need to change the values that underpin our society: we need dynamism, resilience, sustainability, fairness, responsibility, solidarity and humility. How can we incorporate these into leadership, countries, and the financial system? Fundamentally, he wants to use the financial system to help revalue investments to mitigate climate change. All companies should disclose their plans to get to carbon zero, and the financial sector must take this into account when giving loans and valuing companies. That is his main argument and if he stuck to it and then just gave us the details it would be a better book.
Carney believes in the power of free enterprise. The private sector has a dynamism absent from government. Government needs to shape the market, but then get out of the way. In this, I can tell that he comes from the Bill Morneau side of the Liberal Party of Canada. As he concedes, he is an ultimate technocrat. Personally, I think that we need a technocracy and a free market. They are not the whole answer, but they are part of the answer. Not everybody should be like Carney or Morneau, but we need people like them.
Mark Carney is a man with a plan, a bureaucratic consensus on how to use the financial system to help stop climate change. He is a very liberal man and so am I. I think that his goals are admirable and his suggestions are laudable, but I don’t know how all this is going to happen. He represents a global elite of power, and it is an iron law that power begets opposition to that power. There will be losers from any new system and those who know they will lose will fight tooth and nail to keep what they have.
As for climate change itself, I am pessimistic short-term and optimistic long-term. I don’t think that the world will meet any of the COP 26 goals, and things are going to get much worse. Then there will be very wrenching adjustments of lifestyle and climate and economy because we have waited far too long. The flip side of this is that there will be companies and countries that transition to a zero carbon economy more quickly. While they will still suffer from the downsides of climate change, their efforts will position them to be leaders in the new economy for everyone else to follow. After the world has tried everything else, we will finally do the right thing.
To start with the weaknesses of the book, it is loosely organized and meandering. Carney was under a Covid 19 lockdown, and it seems like he just decided to write something. The subtitle betrays it: "Climate, Credit, Covid and How We Focus on What Matters." That is a lot to cover. He should “Focus on What Matters,” develop a more focused thesis, argue it closely, and jettison about 1/3 to ½ of this book. There is a lot of technocratese, a bewildering plethora of acronyms, “The IFRS process includes all the major sustainability standards including GRL, TCFD, and SASB.” Parts of this read like an economics textbook: what is value, what is objective value, what is relative value, how markets create value. We get a history of money, central banks, and the Bank of England, the value of humility, what true leadership is, and many of the lessons Carney learned operating at a very high level in the world financial system. I don’t think all of this is necessary.
Carney says that price and value are not the same, but we think they are. We have a problem of market fundamentalism, building a market society rather than a market economy. Amazon is worth 1.5 billion dollars, but the Amazon rainforest is worth nothing. We need to change the values that underpin our society: we need dynamism, resilience, sustainability, fairness, responsibility, solidarity and humility. How can we incorporate these into leadership, countries, and the financial system? Fundamentally, he wants to use the financial system to help revalue investments to mitigate climate change. All companies should disclose their plans to get to carbon zero, and the financial sector must take this into account when giving loans and valuing companies. That is his main argument and if he stuck to it and then just gave us the details it would be a better book.
Carney believes in the power of free enterprise. The private sector has a dynamism absent from government. Government needs to shape the market, but then get out of the way. In this, I can tell that he comes from the Bill Morneau side of the Liberal Party of Canada. As he concedes, he is an ultimate technocrat. Personally, I think that we need a technocracy and a free market. They are not the whole answer, but they are part of the answer. Not everybody should be like Carney or Morneau, but we need people like them.
Mark Carney is a man with a plan, a bureaucratic consensus on how to use the financial system to help stop climate change. He is a very liberal man and so am I. I think that his goals are admirable and his suggestions are laudable, but I don’t know how all this is going to happen. He represents a global elite of power, and it is an iron law that power begets opposition to that power. There will be losers from any new system and those who know they will lose will fight tooth and nail to keep what they have.
As for climate change itself, I am pessimistic short-term and optimistic long-term. I don’t think that the world will meet any of the COP 26 goals, and things are going to get much worse. Then there will be very wrenching adjustments of lifestyle and climate and economy because we have waited far too long. The flip side of this is that there will be companies and countries that transition to a zero carbon economy more quickly. While they will still suffer from the downsides of climate change, their efforts will position them to be leaders in the new economy for everyone else to follow. After the world has tried everything else, we will finally do the right thing.
May 4, 2021
This book was a thorough and thought provoking exploration of some of the most pressing issues of our time coupled with a number of creative and compelling potential solutions. I felt this book did a good job canvassing defining moments of crises over the past two decades, discussing the financial crisis and pandemic as well as a look forward to the lessons this could teach us about the upcoming climate crisis. The book offered a useful array of lessons and takeaways that the Carney has gleaned through his unique and high level professional experiences from these past moments of seismic shift, highlighting the ways that we can use this knowledge to avoid the worsts of future crises.
The organization of this book was also effective. The three sections, which easily could have each comprised their own book, woven together through the central theme of value. This provided the scope to discuss the history of money and couch the discussion without the broader social and philosophical context of how our society thinks about value before delving in the to the heart of the subject matter. Finally, leading into a more robust discussion on the vision Carney has for how to ameliorate these existing problems within this broader social context. This allowed for fun tendrils throughout linking the the different sections through unexpected and insightful connections.
One of the areas where this book could have been improved however was in terms of concision. While the chapters were broken into more easily manageable subsections there could have been more work done to limit the repetition throughout the book. This seemed to move beyond the point of emphasis towards a lack of respect for the ability of the reader to pick up on the key points the first times they were mentioned. This could have served to make the book shorter and more to the point. In addition, while this book was very well researched and supported with a number of objective facts the interjection of personal anecdotes and stories was also generally welcome change. However, the orientation of these stories at times seemed to veer more towards self aggrandizement than simply story telling and fact delivery which made it unclear at times what the ultimate purpose of the telling of that story was.
Overall, I deeply agree with the main thrust of the argument that in order to remedy these era defining issues there must be robust co-operation and alignment between the private and public sectors. Allowing for the power of the market and our capitalist system to work to the full potential. With this guiding principle Carney offers a number of resolute and implementable ideas to consider and put into practice. Making this book a thoughtful analysis of where we have been and a hopeful challenge to push ourselves to see where we can go.
The organization of this book was also effective. The three sections, which easily could have each comprised their own book, woven together through the central theme of value. This provided the scope to discuss the history of money and couch the discussion without the broader social and philosophical context of how our society thinks about value before delving in the to the heart of the subject matter. Finally, leading into a more robust discussion on the vision Carney has for how to ameliorate these existing problems within this broader social context. This allowed for fun tendrils throughout linking the the different sections through unexpected and insightful connections.
One of the areas where this book could have been improved however was in terms of concision. While the chapters were broken into more easily manageable subsections there could have been more work done to limit the repetition throughout the book. This seemed to move beyond the point of emphasis towards a lack of respect for the ability of the reader to pick up on the key points the first times they were mentioned. This could have served to make the book shorter and more to the point. In addition, while this book was very well researched and supported with a number of objective facts the interjection of personal anecdotes and stories was also generally welcome change. However, the orientation of these stories at times seemed to veer more towards self aggrandizement than simply story telling and fact delivery which made it unclear at times what the ultimate purpose of the telling of that story was.
Overall, I deeply agree with the main thrust of the argument that in order to remedy these era defining issues there must be robust co-operation and alignment between the private and public sectors. Allowing for the power of the market and our capitalist system to work to the full potential. With this guiding principle Carney offers a number of resolute and implementable ideas to consider and put into practice. Making this book a thoughtful analysis of where we have been and a hopeful challenge to push ourselves to see where we can go.
July 17, 2021
I hated this book. I hated it so much. I probably shouldn't have started it. Once I started and immediately didn't like it I should have stopped. It's bad. It's a boring ass topic. Economics are boring. He doesn't do anything to make them interesting. He's all over the place. The audience is unclear. The message is scattered. The writing is bad. He has a hyper focus on the environment but isn't evidence based enough to provide any criticism of environmental apocalypse scenarios like those suggested by Greta Thunberg and even supports the eco terrorist group Extinction Rebellion.
At one point he just goes on for like a whole chapter about leadership and it's just boring as stuff you'd get from some bland Government training course. Who is the audience? Leaders and potential leaders? Industry leaders? It very evidently wasn't me.
It's boring. It's bad. I think this is the worst book I've read in my adult like. Don't read it. Just don't.
At one point he just goes on for like a whole chapter about leadership and it's just boring as stuff you'd get from some bland Government training course. Who is the audience? Leaders and potential leaders? Industry leaders? It very evidently wasn't me.
It's boring. It's bad. I think this is the worst book I've read in my adult like. Don't read it. Just don't.
January 3, 2023
Former Bank of Canada and Bank of the UK Governor Mark Carney argues that, currently, society has conflated price and value. The market, he says, can put a price on anything, but when we start seeing price and value as the same thing, we lose something important. Then there's another 600 pages about what this means for Canada and global politics in relation to covid, climate change, etc.
Honestly, if you're interested in fiscal policy and some history of economics. There's a lot here. If you're not, probably just read a quality publication's review of this book.
Honestly, if you're interested in fiscal policy and some history of economics. There's a lot here. If you're not, probably just read a quality publication's review of this book.
March 31, 2023
Gosh this man likes to preach his economic views and not only that but he has the audacity to be boring with it!
This read like an economics text book but without good summaries. Maybe with good editing this could have been so much more.
This read like an economics text book but without good summaries. Maybe with good editing this could have been so much more.
April 25, 2021
0.80
Former banker finds out its woke to talk about "ethical banking" and "values." Both abstract terms that mean nothing.
neoliberal propaganda.
Former banker finds out its woke to talk about "ethical banking" and "values." Both abstract terms that mean nothing.
neoliberal propaganda.
December 14, 2023
Decent intro to economics and theories of value. Prescriptions were extremely limp. Derides neoliberalism and yet celebrates its authors and supports neoliberal policies.
July 30, 2021
A lot of this book was very interesting, although extremely dense (even at 500 pages). Mark Carney is clearly very intelligent and well-read, and it was quite incredible the sheer volume of detailed discussions presented in the book. Sometimes this was a bit overwhelming to have in a single book, even if most of the ideas were very interesting.
For me the real value of this book was bringing some of these discussions on economic value/values into the mainstream. Economics as a field has a fairly close-minded view of many theories, and much of the nuance/history is not taught in economic courses. So even if these discussions have been had in other fields/forums, I thought having a well-respected economist discuss them at (great) length was important.
For me the real value of this book was bringing some of these discussions on economic value/values into the mainstream. Economics as a field has a fairly close-minded view of many theories, and much of the nuance/history is not taught in economic courses. So even if these discussions have been had in other fields/forums, I thought having a well-respected economist discuss them at (great) length was important.
April 9, 2023
Carney provides tangible action plans to address the financial crisis, the global health crisis, the climate crisis and the 4th industrial revolution. Refreshing views from someone with a background in the finance industry. A little longer than need be, but I will be coming back to reread parts of this in the future!
July 13, 2022
I wish more politicians would read and apply the information in this book. I appreciate that Mark (the author) touched on climate change and social capital, including public trust in institutions.
August 3, 2022
Very slow at the start. Back half is very useful.
December 14, 2023
A challenging book to read - read more like a University book that would be required reading in an economics course. However, the author made it more relevant by focusing on current issues such as climate change, Covid, and the financial crash. Reviewing these issues through a values perspective was a unique way to see the world.
November 15, 2021
Although I found this a very difficult read due to many anachronisms and financial terminology I had trouble understanding, i think his argument is very valid and it's urgent message should be heeded
April 14, 2023
A pretty good read albeit a little dry sometimes but that’s not really surprising. It felt like it touched on so many things that weren’t all really connected together. As such, some parts were better than others. 3.5 stars overall.
February 6, 2023
"Just as any revolution eats its children, unchecked market fundamentalism devours the social capital essential for the long-term dynamism of capitalism itself. Markets on their own will never be adequately incentivised to build social capital, which requires a sense of purpose and common values among individuals, companies, investors and countries. Conversely, values are like muscles that grow with exercise. The book therefore turns to the imperatives of how to recognise and reinforce these essential social foundations of the common good."
What is value? How is it grounded? What values underpin value? Can the very act of valuation shape our values and constrain our choices? How do the valuations of markets affect the values of our society? Does the narrowness of our vision, the poverty of our perspective, mean we undervalue what matters to our collective wellbeing? These questions, which vexed Carney during his time as the governor of the Bank of England, are those that he sets out to explore in this stimulating book. He believes, rightly, that values, beliefs and culture are indispensable to a vibrant economy. These values include such characteristics as responsibility, fairness, integrity, dynamism, solidarity and resilience; and part of our collective responsibility is to reinforce and pass them on.
The first section of the book opens with some definitions. Values represent "principles or standards of behaviour; they are judgements of what is important in life," whereas value "is the regard that something is held to deserve - the importance, worth or usefulness of something." Increasingly, the value of an act, object, even person, is equated to its monetary value as determined by the market. At its most extreme this means that everything can be commoditised, with unavoidable consequences on societies values. As he comments, "when everything is relative, nothing is immutable."
He then explores the earliest, objective, theories of value. Typically, whether espoused by Aristotle or the canonists, these saw justice, value, and market price as separate but interconnected concepts. This meant that the price of goods should take account of both the objective value it holds by virtue of its production, and underlying concepts of justice (which in turn influences value). This means that it is "critical to recognise the extent to which their value theories and economics were unified aspects of a much larger world (indeed heavenly) view." 16th to 18th century thinkers built on this foundation as they increasingly saw the economy as a system, but also began to take a more secularised and pragmatic view of economics. Initially, in a predominately agricultural society, value was tied to the land. Later, following the industrial revolution, thinkers like Karl Marx and Adam Smith articulated value in terms of labour. Regardless, value was seen as an objective measure connected to the production of something and separate to the price set on an it by the market.
This is quite different to how our economies work today, so he turns next to consider subjective perspectives of value. This began with a group known as the neo-classicists in the 19th Century, who "shifted the axis of value theory from objective factors of production to the subjective perceived value of goods to the consumer...value flows from consumption to production, not in the opposite direction." While the earlier objective thinkers were certainly aware of the importance of demand and utility, they became increasingly connected to the concept of value; value functions increasingly became based on utility rather than welfare. Another important new concept is introduced at this point, marginalism ("value was determined 'on the margin', depending not on the total supply of a good but on the particular unit that was being considered for purchase or sale at a given time and place").
He concludes these chapters with a helpful summary: "economic theories of value went from objective, with value tied to factors of production and how production takes place, to subjective, with value being in the eye of the beholder and determined by preferences. Today, it is widely assumed that there is no underlying, intrinsic or fundamental value that isn't already reflected in the price. The market determines value, and the intersection of supply and demand reveals it. It is increasingly common to equate that worth with society's values...This is a departure. Throughout history, value theories have been rooted in the socioeconomic circumstances and political economy of their day, adapting to reflect what the society of the time values...Today...all returns in the market are portrayed as just rewards for value creation; all that is priced can be (mis)characterised as advancing the wealth (and welfare) of nations."
In the next three chapters he unpacks the concept of money, first providing three minimal criteria to provide a working definition. Money is:
"- a store of value with which to transfer purchasing power from today to some future time
- a medium of exchange with which to make payments for goods and services
- a unit of account with which to measure the value of a particular good, service, saving or loan"
Further, these functions operate in a hierarchy, which "points to the reality that money is a social convention." This in turn points to some important characteristics and values that are essential for money to retain its value including, but not limited, to resilience, solidarity, transparency, accountability, trust, a sense of purpose and good governance.
Next he provides a fascinating brief history of money. One highlight is the emergence of fractional reserve banking, the heart of modern finance: "banks take deposits but keep only a fraction of their assets in gold, cash or liquid securities, with the balance used to fund loans and investments. This improves the efficiency of the financial system in that a well-run bank can extend credit to businesses and households on a scale that can be multiples of its loss-absorbing capital." He points out the risk that depositors become concerned about the bank's solvency and withdraw more funds than the bank can meet. This vulnerability eventually prompted the "creation of both institutions of public oversight of private money (like banking supervision) and public safety nets (like depositor insurance and the central banks' core role as 'lenders of last resort')." As he comments, "Money, whether issued publicly or privately, is a public good. Those who create, manage and store it; and those who facilitate and record its transactions all bear special responsibilities to maintain trust in the system, for loss of confidence in one part of the system can undermine trust in the whole." He also provides some striking analysis of the reasons both for adopting the gold standard, and why it was untenable in the long term. In brief, the gold standard guaranteed the stability of currency and exchange rate but was limited by the fact that gold is a finite resource. As the industrialised economies grew, and gold reserves could not keep pace, significant deflation was imposed with a subsequent impact on domestic prices, wages and employment. However, "political pressures began to emerge as suffrage was extended, labour began to organise and political parties representing the working classes began to gain popularity. A single-minded focus on convertibility to the exclusion of the impacts on the domestic economy, particularly on wages and employment, became increasingly untenable." This undermined the whole system, and "The gold standard would ultimately fail because its values were not consistent with those of society. It prioritised international solidarity over domestic solidarity. Its emphasis on external stability conflicted with domestic financial prudence. And once workers gained greater influence, the adjustments required were politically more difficult and took longer, with the burden falling ever more heavily on employment. In short, the system became increasingly unsustainable...credibility and trust cannot be maintained without political support...Domestic financial systems became more complex and conflicts between internal and external balance more frequent." In conclusion, "most countries have now settled on centralised, public fiat money backed by robust institutions in order to provide the public with money that is both highly trusted and easy to use...the history of money shows that sound money is a social convention that endures because of the backing of public institutions that act consistently with society's values...The value of money requires not just the belief of the public at a point in time but, critically, the consent of the public at all times."
From there, he moves on to consider a high-profile modern disruptor in the financial space: crypto currencies. He is optimistic about the concept and the underlying technology, but highly sceptical of the ways they have been executed so far. To understand his reasoning, recall his conceptualisation of money the values lying behind it: "The tried, trusted and robust way to maintain confidence in public money is an independent central bank. This means legal safeguards and clear goals together with democratic accountability to ensure broad-based public support and legitimacy. While not fully immune from the temptation to cheat, central banks have proven the most effective safeguards of society's economic and political interests in a sound currency." He likens crypto to digital gold, an asset to be speculated on. As money, "cryptocurrencies piggyback on the same institutional infrastructure that serves the overall financial system and therefore on the trust that it provides...cryptocurrencies, when used as money, raise a host of issues around consumer and investor protection, market integrity, money laundering, terrorism financing, tax evasion and the circumvention of capital controls and international sanctions. To the extent that they are used for transactions rather than speculation, many cryptocurrencies seem more attractive to those active in the black or illegal economy. This adds to their trust deficit and means that once they are brought into the regulatory net...their attractiveness as money will diminish." Stable coins are more like traditional currency as they are backed by another underlying asset, but unfortunately have the same weaknesses as historical bank issued money: without robust accountability provided by a central bank or similar authority there is a temptation to debase the currency. To avoid this weakness requires the involvement of central banks, which leads to the consideration of a third digital option, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC): "Ultimately, it is highly likely that only a publicly accountable institution could fulfil the governance, liquidity and operational requirements for a stable coin to work consistently through time. In this respect, the credibility of central banks is compelling."
Expanding on the broader impact of the new digital disruptors to traditional currency, he says that: "It would be hubris to think that the current model of independent central banks represents the end of monetary history...One of the important contributions of rebalancing values will be to maintain the value of public money. That doesn't mean holding back the tide of innovation. Rather it means supporting it in a way that reinforces the core values behind money. The future of money must be trusted, resilient, fair, inclusive, transparent, accountable and dynamic. Fundamentally, the public response to private innovation must ensure that the new system serves the public." This also means that we can never go back to "a form of money, like the gold standard, where the burden of adjustment falls most heavily on one class...Rather, it means taking full advantage of new technologies to create a more flexible economy that makes more regular, smoother adjustments, instead of building large imbalances and vulnerabilities that are then brutally resolved." For this reason, he predicts that whatever the technological innovations, central banks will need to continue to fulfil their core function of providing public backstops to ensure that public trust in money is maintained: "For money to be sound it must be trusted. It must hold its value and be part of a financial system that maintains confidence by being resilient to shocks. Resilience requires the right institutional backing, institutions with clear mandates, the right tools to achieve them and the political and public accountability. The key institutions behind the value of money, particularly central banks, need to nurture and maintain the consent of the public."
Next, he considers the implications of the move from a market economy to a market society, and whether the "expansion of the market is changing the underlying social contract on which it has been based...are we consuming the social capital necessary to create economic and human capital? The risks to the market functioning should not be underestimated. We simply cannot take the market system, which produces such plenty and so many solutions, for granted."
He unpacks these ideas in the middle section of the book by considering a (recently) past, present and (imminent) future shock to the global economy. In each case we see values in tension with value. The first is the 2008 global financial crisis, which happened because finance became increasingly abstract, due to a combination of complacency and greed: "When those who make decisions to grant loans are doing so only in order to sell them on, their duty of care diminishes." Banks that had lost sight of their purpose (to serve households and businesses) and which had become too big to fail resulted in the meltdown that we all remember so well. This chapter is particularly vivid because of Carney's experience as a central banker in Canada at the time, and the lessons learned he provides towards the end of chapter 7 are really insightful. The systematic and process improvements implemented following the crisis meant that the next shock he details, COVID, could be borne much better by the world economy. In fact, banking and finance were able to serve as a force for good and passed the severe test imposed by the pandemic: "Society's response to COVID has revealed much about people's relationship to the state and the values of society. Most fundamentally, when faced with catastrophe, governments and citizens drew on their core values and made decisions based on human compassion and not financial optimisation." He draws out some important insights on what this reveals about societies values, such as: "When citizens stay at home after a government institutes a lock- down or wear a mask after a regulation requiring one is issued, these actions can be viewed as part of the Hobbesian bargain: obedience in exchange for protection. But that misses an important part of the picture. For many, this obedience stems from their willingness to comply with the decrees of a legitimate and trusted power, as well as their desire to help fellow citizens. Compliance is a contribution to society's success, the reciprocal obligations in the social contract rather than a response to Hobbesian state coercion. Coercion might be necessary in the extreme, but it is not the primary means of achieving government ends." The importance of the state and the costs of its failure were starkly emphasised by COVID; this is even more so with the third shock he examines, climate change. In these two chapters he shows the importance of understanding how to influence and change our values to focus on stewardship over short term profit.
The third and last section of the book was weaker than what went before, and disappointingly reads more like fleshed out notes from public speaking engagements. There was a lot of repetition of the same memorable phrases and rhetorical flourishes which was a bit irritating, and while he has lots of good ideas none of them are explored in any detail. That might be fine as a call to action, but without this grounding it is difficult to see how any of them are achievable. Briefly, individuals (and particularly leaders) need to develop a sense of vocation. Companies need to recover a sense of purpose ("what an organisation stands for, why it does what it does and what it should be trusted to deliver...the purpose of companies is always broader than a simple bottom line. Companies have stakeholders...And companies are themselves stakeholders. They have a deep interest in and share responsibility for the economic, social and environmental systems in which they operate...The economy does not comprise simple islands of profit-maximising individuals who come together temporarily through a web of contracts. Companies are the engine of value creation in a modern economy. They are complex organisations. Companies bring people together to act collectively, with their motives empowered and their actions coordinated by their companies' purpose.") Finally, nations need to foster outward looking patriotism (distinct from inward looking nationalism): "The nation serves an essential economic role, but it is much more than a collection of marketplaces or a trade negotiator. The state embodies collective ideals such as equality of opportunity, liberty, fairness, solidarity and sustainability. We must build consensus around national goals...And we must strive to achieve those goals in ways that serve the common good so that all benefit...A deeper sense of national values could lead to more focused, constructive international engagement. Using a values-based approach, it is possible to build a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable globalisation."
It is hard to disagree with Carney's closing sentiments: "When bankers become detached from end users, their only reward becomes money, ignoring the satisfaction from helping a client or colleague succeed. This reductionist view of the human condition is a poor foundation for ethical financial institutions needed to support long-term prosperity...Humility matters. It matters because it is an attitude to leading and governing. Not an impediment to acting...Being humble is recognising that we are custodians of our companies, communities and countries. And that all are equal within. That the common good trumps utilitarianism...We have a choice. We can continue to let financial valuation narrow our values or we can create an ecosystem in which society's values broaden the market's conceptions of value. In this way, individual creativity and market dynamism will be channelled to achieve society's highest goals."
What is value? How is it grounded? What values underpin value? Can the very act of valuation shape our values and constrain our choices? How do the valuations of markets affect the values of our society? Does the narrowness of our vision, the poverty of our perspective, mean we undervalue what matters to our collective wellbeing? These questions, which vexed Carney during his time as the governor of the Bank of England, are those that he sets out to explore in this stimulating book. He believes, rightly, that values, beliefs and culture are indispensable to a vibrant economy. These values include such characteristics as responsibility, fairness, integrity, dynamism, solidarity and resilience; and part of our collective responsibility is to reinforce and pass them on.
The first section of the book opens with some definitions. Values represent "principles or standards of behaviour; they are judgements of what is important in life," whereas value "is the regard that something is held to deserve - the importance, worth or usefulness of something." Increasingly, the value of an act, object, even person, is equated to its monetary value as determined by the market. At its most extreme this means that everything can be commoditised, with unavoidable consequences on societies values. As he comments, "when everything is relative, nothing is immutable."
He then explores the earliest, objective, theories of value. Typically, whether espoused by Aristotle or the canonists, these saw justice, value, and market price as separate but interconnected concepts. This meant that the price of goods should take account of both the objective value it holds by virtue of its production, and underlying concepts of justice (which in turn influences value). This means that it is "critical to recognise the extent to which their value theories and economics were unified aspects of a much larger world (indeed heavenly) view." 16th to 18th century thinkers built on this foundation as they increasingly saw the economy as a system, but also began to take a more secularised and pragmatic view of economics. Initially, in a predominately agricultural society, value was tied to the land. Later, following the industrial revolution, thinkers like Karl Marx and Adam Smith articulated value in terms of labour. Regardless, value was seen as an objective measure connected to the production of something and separate to the price set on an it by the market.
This is quite different to how our economies work today, so he turns next to consider subjective perspectives of value. This began with a group known as the neo-classicists in the 19th Century, who "shifted the axis of value theory from objective factors of production to the subjective perceived value of goods to the consumer...value flows from consumption to production, not in the opposite direction." While the earlier objective thinkers were certainly aware of the importance of demand and utility, they became increasingly connected to the concept of value; value functions increasingly became based on utility rather than welfare. Another important new concept is introduced at this point, marginalism ("value was determined 'on the margin', depending not on the total supply of a good but on the particular unit that was being considered for purchase or sale at a given time and place").
He concludes these chapters with a helpful summary: "economic theories of value went from objective, with value tied to factors of production and how production takes place, to subjective, with value being in the eye of the beholder and determined by preferences. Today, it is widely assumed that there is no underlying, intrinsic or fundamental value that isn't already reflected in the price. The market determines value, and the intersection of supply and demand reveals it. It is increasingly common to equate that worth with society's values...This is a departure. Throughout history, value theories have been rooted in the socioeconomic circumstances and political economy of their day, adapting to reflect what the society of the time values...Today...all returns in the market are portrayed as just rewards for value creation; all that is priced can be (mis)characterised as advancing the wealth (and welfare) of nations."
In the next three chapters he unpacks the concept of money, first providing three minimal criteria to provide a working definition. Money is:
"- a store of value with which to transfer purchasing power from today to some future time
- a medium of exchange with which to make payments for goods and services
- a unit of account with which to measure the value of a particular good, service, saving or loan"
Further, these functions operate in a hierarchy, which "points to the reality that money is a social convention." This in turn points to some important characteristics and values that are essential for money to retain its value including, but not limited, to resilience, solidarity, transparency, accountability, trust, a sense of purpose and good governance.
Next he provides a fascinating brief history of money. One highlight is the emergence of fractional reserve banking, the heart of modern finance: "banks take deposits but keep only a fraction of their assets in gold, cash or liquid securities, with the balance used to fund loans and investments. This improves the efficiency of the financial system in that a well-run bank can extend credit to businesses and households on a scale that can be multiples of its loss-absorbing capital." He points out the risk that depositors become concerned about the bank's solvency and withdraw more funds than the bank can meet. This vulnerability eventually prompted the "creation of both institutions of public oversight of private money (like banking supervision) and public safety nets (like depositor insurance and the central banks' core role as 'lenders of last resort')." As he comments, "Money, whether issued publicly or privately, is a public good. Those who create, manage and store it; and those who facilitate and record its transactions all bear special responsibilities to maintain trust in the system, for loss of confidence in one part of the system can undermine trust in the whole." He also provides some striking analysis of the reasons both for adopting the gold standard, and why it was untenable in the long term. In brief, the gold standard guaranteed the stability of currency and exchange rate but was limited by the fact that gold is a finite resource. As the industrialised economies grew, and gold reserves could not keep pace, significant deflation was imposed with a subsequent impact on domestic prices, wages and employment. However, "political pressures began to emerge as suffrage was extended, labour began to organise and political parties representing the working classes began to gain popularity. A single-minded focus on convertibility to the exclusion of the impacts on the domestic economy, particularly on wages and employment, became increasingly untenable." This undermined the whole system, and "The gold standard would ultimately fail because its values were not consistent with those of society. It prioritised international solidarity over domestic solidarity. Its emphasis on external stability conflicted with domestic financial prudence. And once workers gained greater influence, the adjustments required were politically more difficult and took longer, with the burden falling ever more heavily on employment. In short, the system became increasingly unsustainable...credibility and trust cannot be maintained without political support...Domestic financial systems became more complex and conflicts between internal and external balance more frequent." In conclusion, "most countries have now settled on centralised, public fiat money backed by robust institutions in order to provide the public with money that is both highly trusted and easy to use...the history of money shows that sound money is a social convention that endures because of the backing of public institutions that act consistently with society's values...The value of money requires not just the belief of the public at a point in time but, critically, the consent of the public at all times."
From there, he moves on to consider a high-profile modern disruptor in the financial space: crypto currencies. He is optimistic about the concept and the underlying technology, but highly sceptical of the ways they have been executed so far. To understand his reasoning, recall his conceptualisation of money the values lying behind it: "The tried, trusted and robust way to maintain confidence in public money is an independent central bank. This means legal safeguards and clear goals together with democratic accountability to ensure broad-based public support and legitimacy. While not fully immune from the temptation to cheat, central banks have proven the most effective safeguards of society's economic and political interests in a sound currency." He likens crypto to digital gold, an asset to be speculated on. As money, "cryptocurrencies piggyback on the same institutional infrastructure that serves the overall financial system and therefore on the trust that it provides...cryptocurrencies, when used as money, raise a host of issues around consumer and investor protection, market integrity, money laundering, terrorism financing, tax evasion and the circumvention of capital controls and international sanctions. To the extent that they are used for transactions rather than speculation, many cryptocurrencies seem more attractive to those active in the black or illegal economy. This adds to their trust deficit and means that once they are brought into the regulatory net...their attractiveness as money will diminish." Stable coins are more like traditional currency as they are backed by another underlying asset, but unfortunately have the same weaknesses as historical bank issued money: without robust accountability provided by a central bank or similar authority there is a temptation to debase the currency. To avoid this weakness requires the involvement of central banks, which leads to the consideration of a third digital option, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC): "Ultimately, it is highly likely that only a publicly accountable institution could fulfil the governance, liquidity and operational requirements for a stable coin to work consistently through time. In this respect, the credibility of central banks is compelling."
Expanding on the broader impact of the new digital disruptors to traditional currency, he says that: "It would be hubris to think that the current model of independent central banks represents the end of monetary history...One of the important contributions of rebalancing values will be to maintain the value of public money. That doesn't mean holding back the tide of innovation. Rather it means supporting it in a way that reinforces the core values behind money. The future of money must be trusted, resilient, fair, inclusive, transparent, accountable and dynamic. Fundamentally, the public response to private innovation must ensure that the new system serves the public." This also means that we can never go back to "a form of money, like the gold standard, where the burden of adjustment falls most heavily on one class...Rather, it means taking full advantage of new technologies to create a more flexible economy that makes more regular, smoother adjustments, instead of building large imbalances and vulnerabilities that are then brutally resolved." For this reason, he predicts that whatever the technological innovations, central banks will need to continue to fulfil their core function of providing public backstops to ensure that public trust in money is maintained: "For money to be sound it must be trusted. It must hold its value and be part of a financial system that maintains confidence by being resilient to shocks. Resilience requires the right institutional backing, institutions with clear mandates, the right tools to achieve them and the political and public accountability. The key institutions behind the value of money, particularly central banks, need to nurture and maintain the consent of the public."
Next, he considers the implications of the move from a market economy to a market society, and whether the "expansion of the market is changing the underlying social contract on which it has been based...are we consuming the social capital necessary to create economic and human capital? The risks to the market functioning should not be underestimated. We simply cannot take the market system, which produces such plenty and so many solutions, for granted."
He unpacks these ideas in the middle section of the book by considering a (recently) past, present and (imminent) future shock to the global economy. In each case we see values in tension with value. The first is the 2008 global financial crisis, which happened because finance became increasingly abstract, due to a combination of complacency and greed: "When those who make decisions to grant loans are doing so only in order to sell them on, their duty of care diminishes." Banks that had lost sight of their purpose (to serve households and businesses) and which had become too big to fail resulted in the meltdown that we all remember so well. This chapter is particularly vivid because of Carney's experience as a central banker in Canada at the time, and the lessons learned he provides towards the end of chapter 7 are really insightful. The systematic and process improvements implemented following the crisis meant that the next shock he details, COVID, could be borne much better by the world economy. In fact, banking and finance were able to serve as a force for good and passed the severe test imposed by the pandemic: "Society's response to COVID has revealed much about people's relationship to the state and the values of society. Most fundamentally, when faced with catastrophe, governments and citizens drew on their core values and made decisions based on human compassion and not financial optimisation." He draws out some important insights on what this reveals about societies values, such as: "When citizens stay at home after a government institutes a lock- down or wear a mask after a regulation requiring one is issued, these actions can be viewed as part of the Hobbesian bargain: obedience in exchange for protection. But that misses an important part of the picture. For many, this obedience stems from their willingness to comply with the decrees of a legitimate and trusted power, as well as their desire to help fellow citizens. Compliance is a contribution to society's success, the reciprocal obligations in the social contract rather than a response to Hobbesian state coercion. Coercion might be necessary in the extreme, but it is not the primary means of achieving government ends." The importance of the state and the costs of its failure were starkly emphasised by COVID; this is even more so with the third shock he examines, climate change. In these two chapters he shows the importance of understanding how to influence and change our values to focus on stewardship over short term profit.
The third and last section of the book was weaker than what went before, and disappointingly reads more like fleshed out notes from public speaking engagements. There was a lot of repetition of the same memorable phrases and rhetorical flourishes which was a bit irritating, and while he has lots of good ideas none of them are explored in any detail. That might be fine as a call to action, but without this grounding it is difficult to see how any of them are achievable. Briefly, individuals (and particularly leaders) need to develop a sense of vocation. Companies need to recover a sense of purpose ("what an organisation stands for, why it does what it does and what it should be trusted to deliver...the purpose of companies is always broader than a simple bottom line. Companies have stakeholders...And companies are themselves stakeholders. They have a deep interest in and share responsibility for the economic, social and environmental systems in which they operate...The economy does not comprise simple islands of profit-maximising individuals who come together temporarily through a web of contracts. Companies are the engine of value creation in a modern economy. They are complex organisations. Companies bring people together to act collectively, with their motives empowered and their actions coordinated by their companies' purpose.") Finally, nations need to foster outward looking patriotism (distinct from inward looking nationalism): "The nation serves an essential economic role, but it is much more than a collection of marketplaces or a trade negotiator. The state embodies collective ideals such as equality of opportunity, liberty, fairness, solidarity and sustainability. We must build consensus around national goals...And we must strive to achieve those goals in ways that serve the common good so that all benefit...A deeper sense of national values could lead to more focused, constructive international engagement. Using a values-based approach, it is possible to build a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable globalisation."
It is hard to disagree with Carney's closing sentiments: "When bankers become detached from end users, their only reward becomes money, ignoring the satisfaction from helping a client or colleague succeed. This reductionist view of the human condition is a poor foundation for ethical financial institutions needed to support long-term prosperity...Humility matters. It matters because it is an attitude to leading and governing. Not an impediment to acting...Being humble is recognising that we are custodians of our companies, communities and countries. And that all are equal within. That the common good trumps utilitarianism...We have a choice. We can continue to let financial valuation narrow our values or we can create an ecosystem in which society's values broaden the market's conceptions of value. In this way, individual creativity and market dynamism will be channelled to achieve society's highest goals."
October 2, 2021
*134th Climate Book*
This book is 26 days late to go back to the library, after a 3 week loan. It took me nearly two months to make my way through this one which, if you know me at all, you will recognize as very out of character. It's true my focus has been a bit scattered this year, but still: this book was a beast.
Not a bad beast, mind you, just very large and outside my normal experience and mostly to do with money, which my mind happens to skip off like butter off a hot pan. This is to say that, in addition to the nearly two months it took me to read this 550 page book, I also mostly skipped many of first chapters, which were largely to do with finance. I fully admit this is my own deficit: finance is important and how we pay for the climate transition is a critical question and I'm glad there are smart people working on it who are capable of focusing on money talk without 3/4 of their brain falling asleep.
Carney does rely on his readers understanding a vast range of specialized finance words and acronyms that were entirely beyond me, and yes, I could have googled them, but I wouldn't have retained the information nor clearly understood how it all fit together without taking a simultaneous Econ 101 course at the very least.
When he dropped the finance lingo and spoke to the book's central thesis directly--that we need a financial system that marries value (price, cost, profit) with values (social and ecological)--his writing was lucid and compelling and often very funny. I greatly enjoyed those parts and they were well worth wading through the rest for me.
After sharing a bit of Greta Thunberg's speech, which he saw in person at the UN Climate Action Summit, he writes:
The man can write, he's very smart, and he is clearly focused on the right priorities and doing the right thing. Of course he shares common blind spots with other straight white dudes in positions of power: he wants economic growth, he likes capitalism and markets, he is solidly for the meritocracy, he wants to limit rather than eliminate income inequality. I do admire and appreciate his acknowledgement of the role of 'luck' in his success, but he sees no fundamental problem with strict hierarchies in all of our organizations and institutions, so long as the right people are at the top--right being people who value the right things and treat people well. That's a better position to take than others on offer, but it is still much easier when you are one of the ones who the world wants to put on top.
An extended discussion of the role of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) in managing fiscal crises in the years since the 2008 unraveling highlights some of the weaknesses: first of all, it is a very wonky passage; secondly, he states, "As its performance during the Covid crisis demonstrated, the financial system today is safer, simpler and fairer." ... Is it? Is that what we saw? I saw an overhaul of benefits programs that at the beginning was heralded for its speed, but here at the vantage point of late 2021, it looks like this new system did what the old system did: allowed billionaires to hoard more wealth, allowed upper-class families to pad their savings accounts and dream of post-pandemic lifetime vacations, sent precarious families into bankruptcy and homelessness, disproportionately killed black and indigenous people and immigrants and refugees, and rolled back decades of progress for working women--especially mothers. Is this "safer, simpler and fairer"? Is he talking about some other working of this system I wasn't privileged to see in my daily life? What it looks like to me right now was that we spent an unprecedented hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up and accelerate our existing social inequalities. I keep hearing people talking in anticipation of our new 'roaring twenties,' while they apparently forget that this directly led to a decade of increasing inequality and economic tension resulting in the Great Depression. It's not something to hope for.
I appreciate his thesis and the work he's put into realizing it, despite his blinkers on some core issues, and I'm glad he's working for the UN on the climate transition because I think he'll do a lot of good there. I'm glad I read the book although I already have blanked out anything to do with financial systems. Those who are interested in the ideas presented and would like to skip the money talk might better served by listening to his BBC Reith Lectures, which I heard on CBC Ideas: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/...
And now I will finally bring this back to the library for the benefit of the dozens of people still waiting for it.
This book is 26 days late to go back to the library, after a 3 week loan. It took me nearly two months to make my way through this one which, if you know me at all, you will recognize as very out of character. It's true my focus has been a bit scattered this year, but still: this book was a beast.
Not a bad beast, mind you, just very large and outside my normal experience and mostly to do with money, which my mind happens to skip off like butter off a hot pan. This is to say that, in addition to the nearly two months it took me to read this 550 page book, I also mostly skipped many of first chapters, which were largely to do with finance. I fully admit this is my own deficit: finance is important and how we pay for the climate transition is a critical question and I'm glad there are smart people working on it who are capable of focusing on money talk without 3/4 of their brain falling asleep.
Carney does rely on his readers understanding a vast range of specialized finance words and acronyms that were entirely beyond me, and yes, I could have googled them, but I wouldn't have retained the information nor clearly understood how it all fit together without taking a simultaneous Econ 101 course at the very least.
When he dropped the finance lingo and spoke to the book's central thesis directly--that we need a financial system that marries value (price, cost, profit) with values (social and ecological)--his writing was lucid and compelling and often very funny. I greatly enjoyed those parts and they were well worth wading through the rest for me.
To Schelling, the intangible qualities associated with life were not that different form other consumer goods. We put a value on pain when, through the market, we set a price for Ibuprofen and a value on pleasure when we set a price for Pepsi. ... Schelling argued that what mattered was that these judgements on the value of intangibles were made by the general population and not by economists.
First, unlike most consumer goods, life is what some economists term a non-positional good. That means that no part of a life's value stems form the ownership of comparable goods by others. We do not feel any better off when those around us have less life [ed. I can think of a few exceptions], though we may feel better off when we have a nicer car. In contrast, drawing on a host of evidence form behavioural trials, Robert Frank posits that the value of many consumption goods is partly based on how they affect the person's actual or perceived position. ... Evidence shows that workplace safety and risk of death are valued in absolute terms. People will support measures that increase their life expectancy even if it increases the life expectancy of others by more. Frank concludes that life is the one unequivocal non-positional good.
It seems odd to have to state it, but life is different from a Pepsi.
After sharing a bit of Greta Thunberg's speech, which he saw in person at the UN Climate Action Summit, he writes:
I sat in the UN General Assembly hall as these words cut through th assembled presidents, prime ministers, business leaders and other 'dignitaries.' People, like me, who were there because they felt they were committed to addressing climate change. To growing high-paying, sustainable jobs in all our economies. We had entered feeling pretty good about ourselves. We weren't the deniers. We recognized the risks. We were among the vanguard with pragmatic solutions to what we knew was the world's biggest challenge.
And yet there it was in black and white, with the clarity and certainty of youth: we were failing.
In the ensuing months, I would meet Greta Thunberg a few times. ... This Swedish teenager challenges with a clarity and force of reason that belie her age. She reinforces the remorseless logic of a carbon budget that is rapidly being spent. Her determination lays bare the imperatives of climate physics and the scale of the challenge that we face.
When Greta came to the Bank of England, she interviewed me for a documentary and met our climate team and afterwards we went down to see the gold in our vaults. That gilded hoard, nominally of great value, lying inert in a basement mocked the earlier conversation about the resources needed to fight climate change. With her, you are always conscious of misplaced priorities, of the time slipping away, of the need to rearrange national priorities and act. Now.
The man can write, he's very smart, and he is clearly focused on the right priorities and doing the right thing. Of course he shares common blind spots with other straight white dudes in positions of power: he wants economic growth, he likes capitalism and markets, he is solidly for the meritocracy, he wants to limit rather than eliminate income inequality. I do admire and appreciate his acknowledgement of the role of 'luck' in his success, but he sees no fundamental problem with strict hierarchies in all of our organizations and institutions, so long as the right people are at the top--right being people who value the right things and treat people well. That's a better position to take than others on offer, but it is still much easier when you are one of the ones who the world wants to put on top.
An extended discussion of the role of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) in managing fiscal crises in the years since the 2008 unraveling highlights some of the weaknesses: first of all, it is a very wonky passage; secondly, he states, "As its performance during the Covid crisis demonstrated, the financial system today is safer, simpler and fairer." ... Is it? Is that what we saw? I saw an overhaul of benefits programs that at the beginning was heralded for its speed, but here at the vantage point of late 2021, it looks like this new system did what the old system did: allowed billionaires to hoard more wealth, allowed upper-class families to pad their savings accounts and dream of post-pandemic lifetime vacations, sent precarious families into bankruptcy and homelessness, disproportionately killed black and indigenous people and immigrants and refugees, and rolled back decades of progress for working women--especially mothers. Is this "safer, simpler and fairer"? Is he talking about some other working of this system I wasn't privileged to see in my daily life? What it looks like to me right now was that we spent an unprecedented hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up and accelerate our existing social inequalities. I keep hearing people talking in anticipation of our new 'roaring twenties,' while they apparently forget that this directly led to a decade of increasing inequality and economic tension resulting in the Great Depression. It's not something to hope for.
I appreciate his thesis and the work he's put into realizing it, despite his blinkers on some core issues, and I'm glad he's working for the UN on the climate transition because I think he'll do a lot of good there. I'm glad I read the book although I already have blanked out anything to do with financial systems. Those who are interested in the ideas presented and would like to skip the money talk might better served by listening to his BBC Reith Lectures, which I heard on CBC Ideas: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/...
And now I will finally bring this back to the library for the benefit of the dozens of people still waiting for it.
July 14, 2021
Economics is something about which everyone seems to have a strong opinion. However, the strength of these opinions often doesn't translate to actual knowledge to back it up. This can't be said about Mark Carney.
He is a very very smart man and he tackles the issue of 'Values' in a thorough and thought provoking way. This book has a lot to say about how we value things.....the one liner he uses to great effect is that Amazon.com has a clear and well known financial value but the Amazon rain forest doesn't appear on any ledger. It's as though it has zero value until it is cleared.
This is no easy read. If you breeze through it then it's likely you just don't understand what he is saying. This is an excellent book that has many pages but still felt too short to give the issues a full hearing.
This book would serve as a great basis for a mandatory course to achieve an Economics degree. The values he talks about are important and need to be a topic of discussion in the Economics department......not the Philosophy department.
He is a very very smart man and he tackles the issue of 'Values' in a thorough and thought provoking way. This book has a lot to say about how we value things.....the one liner he uses to great effect is that Amazon.com has a clear and well known financial value but the Amazon rain forest doesn't appear on any ledger. It's as though it has zero value until it is cleared.
This is no easy read. If you breeze through it then it's likely you just don't understand what he is saying. This is an excellent book that has many pages but still felt too short to give the issues a full hearing.
This book would serve as a great basis for a mandatory course to achieve an Economics degree. The values he talks about are important and need to be a topic of discussion in the Economics department......not the Philosophy department.
October 7, 2021
It is refreshing to find a top economist and businessman of such pedigree with both political savvy and social conscience - someone prepared to look to a future rather than looking for personal gain in the short term without regard to a future world and its survival.
How remarkable it is that that Carney’s signature can be on the banknotes of two separate countries. Quite a mark of achievement!
Educated at both Harvard and Oxford, it is regretful that Carney has, for now, turned down the possibility of entering politics back in his native Canada. We need the help of people with compassion who have a workable plan. I can only hope that he can affect the needed change through his work in the corporate world.
One might have expected this book, written by someone who has been Governors of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England to be a dry, almost incomprehensible tome likely to propagate a much desired snooze at any time of day or night. To the contrary, it is very readable, lively and with a poetic use of language. However, there’s still much that I didn’t understand concerning the history, and stories of the many financial crises that in recent times have peppered our financial lives. So this book is not an easy read.
Carney talks about the meaning of Value from different perspectives throughout history and of how that can be measured: the connection, for example, between value and price. Sounds almost like Oscar Wilde. The subject matter could be purely theoretical discourse and the epitome of dryness. However, the author tells a story and peppers it with personal anecdotes drawn from his life and of the many people he has met in his work. One gets the impression that Carney is not wishing to perpetuate the usual stories just because they are convenient.
“The first spring when I was governor of the Bank of Canada, I began to hear a tour bus every 45 minutes outside my window. The guide would say ‘ that's the Bank of Canada - they have the world’s second biggest gold reserves in there.’ And I would think ‘no we don't, we sold out gold in the 1990s.’” I love this story for its humour and truthfulness.
He talks about the value of money and how, through time, the definition has changed. Whether the conversation is about precious metals, fiat currencies, or the different digital currencies and variations, the common denominator is that for money to be sound it must be trusted. He talks about the relationship between precious metals and bank notes, the banking system, its drawbacks and some of its alternatives. He talks about where religion fits into the picture of business life based on ethical considerations. He talks about the lack of morality of participants involved in the financial markets being the normal rather than the exception. He touches COVID 19 and how this particular health emergency has affected the economy.
About the human resource, how do you value life? It should be greater than the investment they represent: the sum total of their skills, aptitudes and commercial value.
There is a big section devoted to the effects of climate change - increasingly undeniable but now very much quantifiable in financial terms. How much do we value the future? Are we delivering what society wants and do we value what it values?
Carney seems to understand the universal attributes of leadership: purpose, perspective, clarity, competence, and humility. It’s certainly refreshing to review what makes a leader and perhaps we should ask this of our own heads of government in whichever country we live. He sees crisis occurring throughout history as an opportunity to question how and what we value, and that should change strategies that dictate how we deal with the future.
He comes over as a learned historian with a good education in the classics. Above all, one gets a sense of the author’s humanity. This book is also an economic treatise on the economic ills of the world and what do about it. We are in the middle of a new industrial revolution with the influence of a pandemic adding to the equation.
Moving forward, for the future of the world in this new industrial era, (he calls it the 4th Industrial Revolution (2018 to 2030), it all comes back to how we value our people. Does Carney have all the answers? That would be unlikely but he is putting energy to find for us some solutions for the problems of the world.
His recommendations to governments is that they should divide their expenditure into three categories: 1. COVID emergency, 2. Current basic ongoing programmes like childcare benefits or spending on defence and 3. Capital measures to boost the longterm productive capacity of the economy. His action plan is not naive aspirations but is based on certain core values: solidarity, fairness, responsibility, resilience, sustainability, dynamism and humility.
Carney’s emphasis is on developing a creative and caring economy.
“At present, in most countries it is more attractive to invest in machines and software than it is to invest in people.” “We should not view technology through the lens of Big Tech, where the role of algorithms is to replace humans, and interactions are organised to feed business models centred on big data.”
The author’s final chapter is devoted to humility. That might sound an oxymoronic term when talking about Government or Big Business. However, Carney sees humility as the desirable and appropriate attitude to leading and governing.
“If we are all humble, we can recognise that answers can be found through processes that will bring them out through debate, considering different perspectives and forging consensus.”
I was inspired by this book that there may be hope for a bright future. I kept asking myself whether the picture Carney paints is overly Utopian and therefore unrealistically obtainable? If anything, I think it smacks of cooperation. Like the author, I believe that is the missing ingredient that will assure us a sustainable future.
How remarkable it is that that Carney’s signature can be on the banknotes of two separate countries. Quite a mark of achievement!
Educated at both Harvard and Oxford, it is regretful that Carney has, for now, turned down the possibility of entering politics back in his native Canada. We need the help of people with compassion who have a workable plan. I can only hope that he can affect the needed change through his work in the corporate world.
One might have expected this book, written by someone who has been Governors of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England to be a dry, almost incomprehensible tome likely to propagate a much desired snooze at any time of day or night. To the contrary, it is very readable, lively and with a poetic use of language. However, there’s still much that I didn’t understand concerning the history, and stories of the many financial crises that in recent times have peppered our financial lives. So this book is not an easy read.
Carney talks about the meaning of Value from different perspectives throughout history and of how that can be measured: the connection, for example, between value and price. Sounds almost like Oscar Wilde. The subject matter could be purely theoretical discourse and the epitome of dryness. However, the author tells a story and peppers it with personal anecdotes drawn from his life and of the many people he has met in his work. One gets the impression that Carney is not wishing to perpetuate the usual stories just because they are convenient.
“The first spring when I was governor of the Bank of Canada, I began to hear a tour bus every 45 minutes outside my window. The guide would say ‘ that's the Bank of Canada - they have the world’s second biggest gold reserves in there.’ And I would think ‘no we don't, we sold out gold in the 1990s.’” I love this story for its humour and truthfulness.
He talks about the value of money and how, through time, the definition has changed. Whether the conversation is about precious metals, fiat currencies, or the different digital currencies and variations, the common denominator is that for money to be sound it must be trusted. He talks about the relationship between precious metals and bank notes, the banking system, its drawbacks and some of its alternatives. He talks about where religion fits into the picture of business life based on ethical considerations. He talks about the lack of morality of participants involved in the financial markets being the normal rather than the exception. He touches COVID 19 and how this particular health emergency has affected the economy.
About the human resource, how do you value life? It should be greater than the investment they represent: the sum total of their skills, aptitudes and commercial value.
There is a big section devoted to the effects of climate change - increasingly undeniable but now very much quantifiable in financial terms. How much do we value the future? Are we delivering what society wants and do we value what it values?
Carney seems to understand the universal attributes of leadership: purpose, perspective, clarity, competence, and humility. It’s certainly refreshing to review what makes a leader and perhaps we should ask this of our own heads of government in whichever country we live. He sees crisis occurring throughout history as an opportunity to question how and what we value, and that should change strategies that dictate how we deal with the future.
He comes over as a learned historian with a good education in the classics. Above all, one gets a sense of the author’s humanity. This book is also an economic treatise on the economic ills of the world and what do about it. We are in the middle of a new industrial revolution with the influence of a pandemic adding to the equation.
Moving forward, for the future of the world in this new industrial era, (he calls it the 4th Industrial Revolution (2018 to 2030), it all comes back to how we value our people. Does Carney have all the answers? That would be unlikely but he is putting energy to find for us some solutions for the problems of the world.
His recommendations to governments is that they should divide their expenditure into three categories: 1. COVID emergency, 2. Current basic ongoing programmes like childcare benefits or spending on defence and 3. Capital measures to boost the longterm productive capacity of the economy. His action plan is not naive aspirations but is based on certain core values: solidarity, fairness, responsibility, resilience, sustainability, dynamism and humility.
Carney’s emphasis is on developing a creative and caring economy.
“At present, in most countries it is more attractive to invest in machines and software than it is to invest in people.” “We should not view technology through the lens of Big Tech, where the role of algorithms is to replace humans, and interactions are organised to feed business models centred on big data.”
The author’s final chapter is devoted to humility. That might sound an oxymoronic term when talking about Government or Big Business. However, Carney sees humility as the desirable and appropriate attitude to leading and governing.
“If we are all humble, we can recognise that answers can be found through processes that will bring them out through debate, considering different perspectives and forging consensus.”
I was inspired by this book that there may be hope for a bright future. I kept asking myself whether the picture Carney paints is overly Utopian and therefore unrealistically obtainable? If anything, I think it smacks of cooperation. Like the author, I believe that is the missing ingredient that will assure us a sustainable future.
June 24, 2021
Chapter 8:
Markets have made morals decline. Lol, morals we're so great a hundred years ago. The globalist are more moral than the localists.
"We should put moral limits on markets". - Fuck you don't thread on me.
"Human dignity" *puke.
If markets destroy morals, the morals suck.
Intrinsic motivation may work on the short term, but degrade when institutionalised.
Blood donations: perfect example. It's largely useless and markets reveal this.
Civic virtue is not a muscle
"Trust must be 100%" but that's impossible
Finnanskrisen:
Alan Greenspan erkände fel?
Han vill ha ett tryggt system baserat på values. Jag vill ha ett otryggt system.
Hans strawman-citat är kassa
Bra liknelse: a city without firecodes.
Markets as prisoners dilemma: en bank kan stänga ner och ta vinsten dir, eller lita på att ekonomin växer?
Markets have made morals decline. Lol, morals we're so great a hundred years ago. The globalist are more moral than the localists.
"We should put moral limits on markets". - Fuck you don't thread on me.
"Human dignity" *puke.
If markets destroy morals, the morals suck.
Intrinsic motivation may work on the short term, but degrade when institutionalised.
Blood donations: perfect example. It's largely useless and markets reveal this.
Civic virtue is not a muscle
"Trust must be 100%" but that's impossible
Finnanskrisen:
Alan Greenspan erkände fel?
Han vill ha ett tryggt system baserat på values. Jag vill ha ett otryggt system.
Hans strawman-citat är kassa
Bra liknelse: a city without firecodes.
Markets as prisoners dilemma: en bank kan stänga ner och ta vinsten dir, eller lita på att ekonomin växer?
September 27, 2021
I really wanted to like this book, as an Economist by degree and working in business. It is a very long and slow read and a book that needs some serious editing. It’s 600 pages and my sense if it were 1/4 out this length it would be significantly improved. The best part is the middle section on the financial crisis, covid and climate, but even this is slow. I had to laugh out loud when towards the end of the book the author gives the example of Amazon and their drive for short clear communication. This was not applied to writing this book. So sadly a tedious, overly long and repetitive writing style, gets in the way of content. A miss for me and I would not recommend reading this book.
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