Could not imagine that we’d get a Liberal party leader who thinks in terms of market realism but not blind worship of the free market, who is both an insider who understands how the world economy works but also how it has failed people. Someone who is focused on results and not process, someone thoughtful and intelligent. Someone who has said the things that I’ve been screaming into the void for a decade — but saying it better.
This is all really important for political insiders to understand. Carney resonates, at least in part, because he's actually telling us it as it is: Market economies have hurt us, but market economies are our current reality.
Personally, even as someone who does not believe markets are good tools for most things, I cannot avoid the reality that we cannot unplug ourselves from the global markets. We cannot engage economically with Europe, the United States (blech), South America, Asia, or anywhere else without playing the market game.
We are currently trapped.
We have to play the game. If we want to get out of it, we need to carefully position ourselves within it first, and then make reforms internally. And for those who don't want to get out of it, we should still be doing whatever we can to limit the damage those with market power can do.
This is where the NDP has fallen flat: they make proposals that ignore market realities, knowing that they will never see the light of day, while their meaningful moves clearly acknowledge that we're beholden to the markets. It makes them look both stupid, and weak. It makes people discouraged and distrustful.
Carney knows what he's doing. Some of us may not like that he won't do more than what the leader of a second tier world power is capable of given the current nature of the global economy. Some of us may not like that he may not want to change the nature of the global economy. But even if he did want to, he can't on his own.
But where he can punch above the weight of the nation is in restructuring our place in the global economy, moving us closer to countries we should probably very much want to be more like, and away from ones we've been far too comfortable with for far too long.
Is he claiming to be?
Do we want him to be?!? There's a couple of business men in charge down south, and... No fucking thank you!