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In an astonishing speech, the Bank of England supremo bashed fatcat financiers and out of touch politicians for overseeing a “lost decade” of stagnating wages and simmering social resentment. The usually dour Canadian technocrat went on the war path against the injustices of globalisation during a ferociously outspoken intervention, saying most people felt it had just allowed the rich to get even richer. And he made an unprecedented call for governments worldwide to step in and redistribute wealth to ordinary working families, saying the gap between the top one per cent and the rest was ripping up the foundations on which the global economy is built.

He warned: “Turning our backs on open markets would be a tragedy, but it is a possibility. Now may be the time of the famous or fortunate, but what of the frustrated and frightened?” Mr Carney’s damning speech is an indication of just how much the rise of populist parties, both in Britain and abroad, has changed the face of politics across the world. It was a clear response to the anti-establishment uprisings manifested in the Brexit vote, Donald Trump’s election victory and the Italian referendum result, which have rocked the complacent establishment.

PA The Bank of England chief said inequality is fuelling a populist surge

PA He urged Theresa May to take radical steps to tackle the growing wealth divide

In a rare departure from his usual highly technical focus on economics, the Bank of England chief used tonight’s speech at Liverpool John Moores University to speak about the societal impact of monetary policy. He zoned in heavily on the “perceptions of inequality” ingrained by the hugely unbalanced distribution of wealth, and also hinted at unease over high levels of immigration by imploring politicians to consider how “sense of community” is an important measure of people’s happiness. And he made pointed remarks about politicians’ obsession with financial data such as GDP figures, saying such talk “bears little relation” to ordinary people’s real concerns about the economy.

PA•REUTERS Mark Carney has delivered a brutal verdict on the liberal establishment

Now may be the time of the famous or fortunate, but what of the frustrated and frightened? Bank of England chief Mark Carney

He said: “Many citizens in advanced economies are facing heightened uncertainty, lamenting a loss of control and losing trust in the system. To them, measures of aggregate progress bear little relation to their own experience. “Rather than a new golden era, globalisation is associated with low wages, insecure employment, stateless corporations and striking inequalities. “Weak income growth has focused growing attention on its distribution. Inequalities which might have been tolerated during generalised prosperity are felt more acutely when economies stagnate.” Pointing out that young people today have experienced the first decade of wage deflation since the 1860s, he added: “At the same time as these intergenerational divides are emerging, evidence suggests that equality of opportunity in the UK remains disturbingly low, potentially reinforcing cultural and economic divides. “All of this matters. As the community groups here in Liverpool will attest, and more formal studies of people’s happiness find, subjective well-being is significantly affected by perceptions of inequality and the sense of community.”

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