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Ms. Carney and her anti-consumption views did not spark public controversy here, but English newspapers and blogs immediately set about highlighting her musings about inequality, the global marketplace and materialism.

After all, Mr. Carney, who steered Canada’s monetary policy since February, 2008, is slated to take the helm at one of the world’s most powerful central banks when he assumes the British governorship next summer. And the dynamic between husband and wife — one a former Goldman Sachs investment banker slated to regulate Britain’s banks, the other an activist concerned by the “visibility and excess of the top 0.1%” — was certainly not lost on the British media.

The Telegraph, for example, pulled from articles she has written for her website and for Canada’s own iPolitics as proof that Ms. Carney “has expressed sympathy for the anti-bank Occupy movement.” The London paper pointed out that in a Nov. 19 iPolitics piece, Ms. Carney deemed income inequality the “defining issue of our time” and said she believes people “fear that the institutions that underpin our country and the global system are either threatened, rotten or inadequate to face down the challenges of the future.”

The article went on to describe the couple’s lifestyle, reporting that they live in a $1.3-million home in Ottawa’s Rockcliffe Park and even adding that “records suggest that they made [$151,000] of improvements in 2009.”

The Daily Bell, a libertarian website, riffed off the Telegraph’s piece, saying Ms. Carney — the vice-president of a liberal think-tank called Canada 2020 — lives a “double-standard,” outright labeling her an anti-bank activist who “does not consider modern industrial society to be very desirable.”