There are two chapters on COVID19 as well the financial crisis, and two on climate change as well as the gold standard. Carney likes to think (or perhaps hopes) he has not lost the common touch, talking to shop owners and students as well as heads of state and other central bankers. The book ends with a chapter on humility. He says “A sense of self must be accompanied by s sense of solidarity.” Next, he considers the implications of the move from a market economy to a market society, and whether the "expansion of the market is changing the underlying social contract on which it has been based...are we consuming the social capital necessary to create economic and human capital? The risks to the market functioning should not be underestimated. We simply cannot take the market system, which produces such plenty and so many solutions, for granted." The organization of this book was also effective. The three sections, which easily could have each comprised their own book, woven together through the central theme of value. This provided the scope to discuss the history of money and couch the discussion without the broader social and philosophical context of how our society thinks about value before delving in the to the heart of the subject matter. Finally, leading into a more robust discussion on the vision Carney has for how to ameliorate these existing problems within this broader social context. This allowed for fun tendrils throughout linking the the different sections through unexpected and insightful connections. Readers might think Carney is therefore not sold on market economies, but he totally is. Despite their unending attempts to monetize values, their continual skirting of regulations to produce the next banking crisis, and the endless greed they routinely qualify as virtue, Carney understands their power to build, innovate, and of course, fund. This, like everything in the book, is not in the least controversial. If we are all humble, we can recognise that answers can be found through processes that will bring them out through debate, considering different perspectives and forging consensus.”

These fundamental problems and others like them, argues Mark Carney, stem from a common crisis in values. Central banker Mark Carney has diagnosed a crisis in value(s). He doesn’t just mean prices being misaligned with values as in frothy asset overvaluations. That’s just a symptom of a deeper malaise. The central idea of his book, says the Toronto Star’s Heather Scoffield, is that “… the world has devolved into a harsh, crisis-prone place by putting a monetary value or price on pretty much everything, and that erodes the societal values that hold the world together.” But the sweep and aim of Value(s) remains magnificent. It will help arm the best in business, finance and government and disarm the worst. The progressive cause has been advanced. The boy from Canada’s Northwest Territories, still slightly incredulous at his own phenomenal career given his modest beginnings, done good.Unfortunately, the book is let down by the author; it is overly long and in places very dry, it's also quite jarringly self-aggrandizing (despite preaching the importance of humility on a number of occasions).

A bold and urgent argument by economist and former bank governor Mark Carney on the radical, foundational change that is required if we are to build an economy and society based not on market values but on human values. Overall, the book has a lot to say on the three Cs: Climate Change, Credit and COVID-19. When discussing the three topics in tandem, it is undoubtedly at its most compelling for the casual reader.

At present, in most countries it is more attractive to invest in machines and software than it is to invest in people.” “We should not view technology through the lens of Big Tech, where the role of algorithms is to replace humans, and interactions are organised to feed business models centred on big data.”