Wealth & Money Quote by Mark Carney

Carney’s line is a quiet rebuke to the fantasy that technocrats can, or should, abolish risk. It’s also an attempt to redraw the social contract that grew hazy after 2008: central banks will be the firefighters, not the arson-proofing service for investors’ portfolios.

The intent is surgical. By separating “asset prices” from “the financial system,” Carney tries to break the reflex that every market dip deserves a monetary rescue. That distinction matters because it signals where public authority ends and private consequence begins. Falling prices are framed as normal, even healthy; what’s intolerable is a fall that cascades into bank runs, frozen credit, layoffs, and a broader collapse. He’s arguing for resilience over reassurance.

The subtext lands on moral hazard without needing the phrase. If market participants believe central banks exist to keep prices elevated, they take on more leverage, more duration risk, more fragility. Carney is telling them: you don’t get a put option from the state. You get guardrails - higher capital, stress tests, liquidity backstops - designed to keep the plumbing working when the party stops.

Context does the heavy lifting. Coming out of the crisis and into the era of quantitative easing, central banks were accused of inflating bubbles and enriching asset holders while wages stagnated. Carney’s formulation is a legitimacy play: it recasts intervention as protection of the real economy, not a subsidy to speculation. It’s also a warning: if you want capitalism without crashes, you’re asking for a different system.