The Spectre of Monetarism Speech given by Mark Carney Governor of the Bank of England  Roscoe Lecture Liverpool John Moores University 5 December 2016  I am grateful to Ben Nelson and Iain de Weymarn for their assistance in preparing these remarks, and to Phil Bunn, Daniel Durling, Alastair Firrell, Jennifer Nemeth, Alice Owen, James Oxley, Claire Chambers, Alice Pugh, Paul Robinson, Carlos Van Hombeeck, and Chris Yeates for background analysis and research. 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  Real incomes falling for a decade. The legacy of a searing financial crisis weighing on confidence and growth. The very nature of work disrupted by a technological revolution. th  This was the middle of the 19 century. Liverpool was in the midst of a golden age; its Custom House was the national Exchequer’s biggest source of revenue. And Karl Marx was scribbling in the British Library, warning of a spectre haunting Europe, the spectre of communism. We meet today during the first lost decade since the 1860s. In the wake of a global financial crisis. And in the midst of a technological revolution that is once again changing the nature of work. Substitute Northern Rock for Overend Gurney; Uber and machine learning for the Spinning Jenny and the steam engine; and Twitter for the telegraph; and you have dynamics that echo those of 150 years ago. Then the villains were the capitalists. Should they today be the central bankers? Are their flights of fancy promoting stagnation and inequality?
2  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  2  The deepening of the symbiotic relationship between global markets and technological progress has lifted more than a billion people out of poverty (Chart 2), while a series of technological advances have fundamentally enriched our lives. Chart 1: 3 ½ billion people have internet access  Chart 2: 1 billion fewer people live on less than $ a day since the early 1980s  Billions of people  Billions of people  3.5  2.0 1.8  3.0  1.6 2.5  1.4 1.2  2.0  1.0 1.5  0.8 0.6  1.0  0.4 0.5  Number of poor at $ a day (2011 PPP)  0.2  0.0 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016  0.0  Source: Internet Live Stats. An internet user is defined as an individual who can access the Internet at home, via any device type and connection. 2015 and 2016 are estimates. 1981  1986  1991  1996  2001  2006  2011  Source: World Bank. $ a day is the World Bank’s current global poverty line. Globally, since 1960, real per capita GDP has risen more than two-and-a-half times (Chart 3), average ii  incomes have begun to converge, and life expectancy has increased by nearly two decades (Chart 4).