King Carney

MARK CARNEY TURNS CANADA INTO A CASH COW There’s a bloke in Ottawa right now quietly running the single greatest economic masterclass on the planet, and the funniest part is that he kinda owes the lucky break to Donald Trump I Love Australia Aug 14 No, seriously. I know I'm a crazy Aussie with a Shih Tzu on my lap that thinks it's a Doberman, but stay with me here, because this is the good stuff. Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, Rhodes Scholar, former Governor of the Bank of Canada, first non-British citizen in three hundred odd years to run the Bank of England, ex Goldman Sachs, former chair of the Bloomberg board. The man's CV reads like someone stacked four careers on top of each other in a trench coat and called it a bloke. He's even got form on our patch: when he fronted the Australian Parliament in March, the first Canadian PM to do it in twenty years, our own Opposition leader Angus Taylor stood up and vouched for him as an old Oxford drinking mate, "a man of the highest calibre," while Malcolm Turnbull (ex Aussie PM), who knew him from his central banking days, called it the most important speech since Trump came back. Both sides of Australian politics lining up to claim the bloke. And in eighteen months he has taken a country that Trump openly threatened to annex, slapped with tariffs, and sneered at as the "51st state," and turned it into the hottest investment destination on Earth. Not one of the hottest. The hottest. Did you hear that all the way down in your lukewarm piddle pool at Mar-a-Lardo dipshit Don? Foreigners poured $183 billion into Canadian stocks and bonds in the past year. Bloomberg’s Matt Winkler, a man who has been following money professionally since the Jurassic era, says it may be the biggest wave of overseas investment into Canada in a century, and possibly ever. Now, in Aussie, that’s a fucking lot of cash. “Money is pouring into Canada like we have not seen, from everywhere.” - Matt Winkler, Bloomberg Since Carney took the job in March 2025, the Toronto Stock Exchange has outperformed every single one of the ten largest stock markets on the planet. Up more than 40 per cent. Better than Wall Street. Better than the entire eurozone. Better than every-fucking-body. Canadian inflation is trending down while America’s is doing whatever the shit you’d call that, a drunk seagull flying into the same window over and over. The bond market is humming like a well-oiled Hilux. IMAX, a company headquartered in a bloody suburb of Toronto, is printing money off the back of Odyssey while Americans drive across state lines like pilgrims to watch it in 70mm. Cenovus, the Canadian energy giant, is a top performer on the TSX partly because half its revenue comes from the US and it’s exempt from the tariffs, because it turns out even the bankrupt steak-salesman conman running Washington eventually worked out he can’t tariff the electricity and oil his own country needs to keep the fucking lights on. Think about how cooked that is. The bloke declared economic war on his closest ally and then had to write himself a permission slip to keep buying their power, because without it half of America goes dark and the fridge holding his Diet Cokes becomes a warm cupboard. Some trade strategy. He set his own house on fire and now he's leaning over the fence asking the neighbour if he can borrow the hose. So how does a country pull that off while sharing the world's longest border with a hostile lunatic? Two ingredients, and here's where we say the words nobody at IFLA ever expected to type, so hold me steady while I type this horrific fucking accolade. Thank you, Donald Trump. Genuinely, cheers for that one, you demented fucking walnut. Because ingredient one is fear, and before Trump started threatening to swallow Canada whole, Canadian politics was drifting toward the same lazy, vibes-based, punish-the-incumbent sleepwalk that infects every comfortable democracy on the planet. Then the human tariff schedule with a comb-over started ranting about annexation, and 40 million Canadians collectively sat bolt upright in bed and said righto, fuck this for a joke, no more mucking about, we are electing the most qualified adult on the continent. And the most qualified adult on the continent just happened to be a central banker who’d already steered two G7 economies through crises without breaking a sweat. Without Trump scaring the electorate straight, Carney possibly never gets within a bull’s roar of the job. The man MAGA calls their greatest enemy is the single biggest reason Canada is currently flogging America on every metric that matters, which has to be the funniest own goal in the entire history of blokes kicking balls into their own nets. Ingredient two is that Carney then did the work. Winkler’s words, not mine, and they’re the most quietly devastating thing anyone has said about the difference between the two men: “He does the work, whatever the work is. And Canadians like that. They like people who have integrity, commitment and gratitude.” - Matt Winkler, Bloomberg He does the work. Four words that have never once been said about the other bloke, a one-man capital flight who thinks a briefing document is what you put under a wobbly table leg. While Trump was golfing and posting, Carney was flying to every trading partner on the map, signing deals his predecessors never had to chase because they’d always had America. When it came time for the biggest military purchase in Canadian history, up to a dozen new submarines, Carney bought German. ThyssenKrupp. Not American. And he did it with over 50 per cent public approval, because when your neighbour spends a year threatening to annex you, buying your submarines somewhere else isn’t controversial, it’s just not being a stupid mug. Meanwhile, south of the border, the tariffs are doing exactly what every economist with a functioning frontal lobe said they would. They’re taxes on American consumers. Winkler again, on national television, saying it plainly: “Tariffs, we all know, are taxes on consumers, and it should be said that way.” - Matt Winkler, Bloomberg And the retaliation is landing right where it fucking hurts. Canadian provinces, not even the federal government, just the provinces off their own bat, are so filthy at Washington that they’ve pulled every drop of American booze off their shelves. The California wine industry is, in Winkler’s word, hemorrhaging. American distillers and winemakers, plenty of them in red states and red counties full of blokes in red hats, are watching their biggest export neighbour simply stop buying their gear, while Mugabe of the Mini Golf stands at a podium telling them they’re winning so hard they should be sick of it. The poor bastards who voted for a trade war are now getting gutted like a flathead by one, and the country they picked the fight with is up 40 per cent and grinning like a shot fox. Here’s the bit that should genuinely rattle Washington though, beyond the market numbers. Winkler pointed out that if you check the global surveys, Canada now sits alongside Switzerland as the most loved country on the whole bloody planet, and the reason is nothing flashier than reasonable policies. Turns out if you spend eighteen months not threatening anyone, not tariffing anyone, and not posting deranged 3am screeds about your own allies, the entire world lines up around the block to shovel money at you. Being a functioning adult is now such a rare commodity among major economies that it trades at a 40 per cent fucking premium. Carney isn’t doing anything magical here. He’s flat out like a lizard drinking doing the boring, unglamorous, thankless grunt work of actual statecraft, and next to the Autarch of the All-You-Can-Eat, boring competence looks like a bloody superpower. And is any of this zero sum? Is Canada’s win America’s loss? Winkler didn’t even blink: “Without a doubt... right now the worst part of the bargain is actually south of the border, not north of the border. And as long as this continues, that’s going to be the case.” - Matt Winkler, Bloomberg But my favourite line of the whole interview, the one that should be printed on a plaque in Ottawa, was Winkler reaching for Tolkien: “Canadians are like hobbits. They’ll save the world for you. They’re consistently underestimated. Carney has been consistently underestimated, certainly by Trump and his enablers.” - Matt Winkler, Bloomberg Hobbits. Quiet, polite, constantly underestimated, and somehow always the ones left standing when the fire dies down. Trump looked north and saw a doormat. What was actually there was a Rhodes Scholar with two central banks on his resume, a grudge politely filed under “leverage,” and a population that had just decided to stop stuffing around. THE TALLY Carney’s eighteen months: $183 billion in foreign investment, the best performing major stock market on Earth at 40 per cent up, inflation falling, most loved country in the world alongside Switzerland, biggest defence purchase in national history signed at over 50 per cent approval, new trade partnerships on every continent. Jesus Christ, why wasn’t my report card anywhere near that? Mine just said “easily distracted, talks in class.” His says “outperformed every economy on Earth, plays well with others, hands in his homework early, sharing skills excellent.” Trump’s same eighteen months: tariffs functioning as confirmed taxes on his own voters, the California wine industry hemorrhaging, allied provinces boycotting American products, the largest military contract his neighbour ever offered handed to Germany, and the country he threatened to annex outperforming his own on every single metric that matters. Report card reads: “does not play well with others, bites classmates, set fire to the sandpit, blamed the sandpit.” One bloke did the work. The other bloke is the reason the first bloke got the job. Strewth. You’d almost feel sorry for him, if he wasn’t quids in on the whole disaster via whatever his mates were shorting that week. But that’s another piece, and it’s coming. PG