David McWilliams

Wanted: smart new bank that gives us the credit we’re due

David McWilliams — Thu, 16 May 2013 08:14:47 +0000

A friend of mine, a small business owner, is typical of many thousands of cash-strapped entrepreneurs in Ireland at the moment. He has a small business and the demand for his product is strong. The market is resilient and in any other country he’d be fine and probably employing a few more people. He is [...]

Wealth gap can’t keep growing

eoincunningham — Mon, 13 May 2013 07:38:14 +0000

The top 1 per cent of Americans now own a staggering 40 per cent of the country’s $54 trillion of wealth. This is an extraordinary figure. When taken together with the fact that wages as a proportion of national income have been falling in the US since the 1980s, we see a vision of a [...]

China could learn from us as it heads for massive debt crisis

David McWilliams — Thu, 09 May 2013 07:49:33 +0000

It is hay fever season again. I know it is because my eyes are streaming. I look at my son and see that I have passed on the nasty hay-fever gene to him too as he struggles with puffy eyes, itchy throat and constant sneezing and wheezing. For the next while, we’ll be watching the [...]

The tracker tale’s sorry ending

David McWilliams — Mon, 06 May 2013 08:15:31 +0000

Do you remember the ad in which a bloke on the top floor of a Dublin bus stands up and admits to all the passengers: “I don’t know what a tracker mortgage is”? He stands up, unsure of himself, and makes his public confession, half-petrified. You can see the relief on his face as he [...]

What Germany’s football success tells us about the eurozone crisis

David McWilliams — Thu, 02 May 2013 07:51:53 +0000

Last night we saw not just a football match between two great teams, but two very different cultural, social and economic models battling for supremacy. On one hand we had the frugal but brilliant Germans of Borussia Dortmund, on the other was the free-spending (and also brilliant) Real Madrid. This was a battle between the [...]

Interview with Colm Hayes for 2FM

eoincunningham — Wed, 01 May 2013 08:56:55 +0000

Being ‘stuck’, getting punished for doing the right thing; watching those in charge throw good money after bad – and why: if my spending is your income, and your income is mine, the last thing we should be doing is undermining that system. Colm and I got together for a quick chat about The Good [...]

BBC World Service – In The Balance

David McWilliams — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:24:30 +0000

Last week I spoke with Manuela Saragosa of the BBC World Service about the price of austerity. We discussed the human cost of the various cuts and burdens placed on economies – what has been inflicted and whether it has actually worked. And if it hasn’t, what was the point of the pain? It was a [...]

Copper-bottomed economics

David McWilliams — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 07:34:21 +0000

For the economist, one of the most dangerous urges is to fall in love with our forecast. That is to say, to become so wedded to our own world view that we are blind to the changes evident all around us and the effect we could have on our own preconceived notions about how the [...]

The end of austerity: the start of opportunity?

David McWilliams — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:50:39 +0000

The forces of austerity are in retreat all around Europe and the world. Let’s make no mistake about what this means. The word ‘austerity’ has come to mean many things, but austerity is shorthand for the European policy of lumbering citizens with the debts of the financial markets and contending that the resulting increase in [...]

This ’70s timewarp is all doom and no disco

David McWilliams — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 08:02:19 +0000

Enda Kenny would cut a dash in a pair of bottle-green, high-waist parallels and a snugly-fitted Bay City Rollers bomber jacket. Or maybe a Robin Gibb, Bee Gees one-piece with the flares up, in which you could hide a six-pack? He should have turned up to the Dáil last week in full 1970s regalia to [...]