But instead of using this windfall to boost investment for longer-term prosperity, it was used for tax cuts.
Instead of worrying about currying favour with voters, the chancellor should therefore crack on and administer a healthy dose of short-term pain and longer-term prosperity.
France will host the latest global attempt to combat climate change at a summit in December, and Carney added to the pressure for action by pointing to the threats to "financial resilience and longer-term prosperity.
"At the end of the day, there were simply not enough shareholders prepared to take a long-term view of Cadbury and prepared to forgo short-term gain for longer-term prosperity," he said.
The key issue now is finding ways to turn the current boom into longer-term prosperity.
This can have some very peculiar consequences for spending decisions, including for the very infrastructure projects that are (quite rightly) heralded as investments that can drive economic recovery and longer-term prosperity.
And he's making some big promises: "full employment," "energy independence," "more prosperity," "longer lives".
In fact, Zimbabwe now confronts a longer road to prosperity and stability than it did at its moment of independence; anyone who was there at the time can testify that this was then a land of prosperity and hope after years of warfare.
No wonder Europe's and Japan's stockmarkets have outpaced those in America, despite the latter's faster GDP growth.Second and more worrying, the success of companies no longer guarantees the prosperity of domestic economies or, more particularly, of domestic workers.
The sorry experience has engendered a fear that the economy's "new normal" can no longer deliver the prosperity gains to which Americans once accustomed themselves and thought their due.
