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Article Archives
David has been running this website for over 18 years and there are plenty of articles covering some of the most turbulent times in the world economy.
Below is a year by year list of Davids’s articles.
ARCHIVES 2016
George Michael: an original in an industry that is gradually fading
More than 30 years on, I still break out in a cold sweat at the opening bars of 'Careless Whisper'. I am back in the teenage disco. Once the saxophone ushered in the full, rounded tones of George Michael, red-haired lads like me knew the night was over. The slow set...
read moreThe year of the outsider
In 2010, I staged a one-man show with the Abbey Theatre called Outsiders. We had a wonderful month-long run in Dublin and then toured the show all around the country. It was a fantastic experience, working with some of Ireland’s most brilliant theatre professionals,...
read moreLet’s make Europe work for us – by being as American as possible
The latest Apple tax revelations mean that Ireland is now on a collision course with the EU Commission and by extension with the EU itself. In a narrow sense — and this might be the only sense that matters — this is a win/win situation for Ireland. However, the issues...
read moreCoveney needs courage to let go of ‘market will fix it’ chestnut
Let’s talk about housing. Walking around Dublin city, whether on the Luas line between Museum and Smithfield, or over the river at the Coombe and the Liberties, you notice the number of vacant sites in prime positions for building homes. The city centre is pockmarked...
read moreCoveney walking a tightrope in risky bid to end housing crisis
Imagine Simon Coveney in a translucent, skin-tight leotard, high above the political swamp, walking the tight-rope between the social reforming objective of rent control and the hard commercial reality of dormant housing supply. Get the picture? This is the minister's...
read moreARCHIVES 2015
Nativity drama playing out in every Irish family is changing our society
Do you remember 'The Snapper'? Roddy Doyle's classic second book of the Barrytown Trilogy, published in 1990, revolves around the Rabbitte family and the teenage pregnancy of Sharon Rabbitte. Written in the late 1980s, it is a familiar tale about a family dealing...
read moreEconomic lessons from the age of the Pharaohs
The Pharaoh awoke petrified by a dream. None of his holy men could interpret it. The Pharaoh dreamed that he was standing by the Nile and that seven cows “attractive and plump” came and fed in the rich grass by the waters. But soon these beasts morphed into seven...
read moreOwn goals scored by Blatter and Platini put me in mind of bankers
Yesterday morning the McWilliams's kitchen table resembled a mini war room. My son and I spread out a huge map of France before us and tried to figure out Paris to Bordeaux in a camper van. We'd been up in Belfast over the weekend and had tried to coax our Nordie...
read moreAll set for a cracker of a Christmas
This Christmas, many of us are heading to family in different parts of the country, lots are returning home and yet more are coming back to Ireland from abroad. Conversations in houses will vary, but lots of families, particularly those from the country, will look...
read moreAs the election looms it’s worth looking at the real division – wealth
A little while ago, I presented a programme on RTÉ called 'Ireland's Great Wealth Divide'. The aim of the documentary was to highlight the significant and persistent divide in wealth that exists in Ireland. The reason it is an important issue to highlight is that even...
read moreARCHIVES 2014
Why the bookie always wins
One of the many positive by-products of the system of better roads built in Ireland over the last decade is the patchwork of better views. Many of the new roads have cut through parts of the countryside that were never seen before, and lots of new vistas of our lovely...
read moreMoney and technology are the new weapons as the old powers become inadequate
This week, the North Korean cyber attack on the US via Sony Pictures, as well as the collapse of the Russian rouble, reveal to us just how the world has changed and how the threats to countries' interests and stability can come from strange, unpredictable places. It...
read moreOil proves Putin’s weak spot
It’s ironic that in the week that the US lifted its ridiculous embargo on communist Cuba, capitalist Russia experienced one of the most debilitating crises any capitalist country can go through – a run on its currency. It is also a bit paradoxical that the Argentinian...
read moreWhy it’s easier to invade Ukraine than defend the Rouble!
The global financial markets are going through a spasm. Emerging markets, long the flavour of the month as poor countries got richer, have seen money flow out of their economies at historical rates. Russia's currency is in free-fall and there's very little that the...
read moreWe create our own buzz
Yesterday, in rural Kilkenny, a man stopped me and asked me when the recovery would be felt in the countryside. He told me he was watching the TV and listening to the radio about the recovery in Dublin and Cork, but he wasn’t feeling it. His question was whether this...
read moreARCHIVES 2013
Ten global market calls for 2014
Today, as there will be lots of commentary on Ireland, let's go large, gain altitude and look at the broad global economic canvas, to see what is likely to happen in 2014. Making forecasts is risky business, but so too is life - and as return is the opposite of risk,...
read moreWhat we’ve learned from the past year — and where we are heading
Now that we are at the end of the year, here are a few things that 2013 taught us about economics, how our economy is doing and what determines where it goes from here. HOUSES AND PROPERTY PRICES This was the year the property market started showing signs of life. Two...
read moreOfficial Europe is in denial
What’s worse? Having to listen to a Portuguese communist telling us that the Euro was a victim of Ireland? Or having to listen to our own guy, when the EU has just nailed his ass to a post, telling us there is “no row” between Ireland and the EU President? I don’t...
read moreThe economy cannot be transformed by ‘doing nothing’, Enda
The Government's new economic strategy was unveiled yesterday. It is supposed to outline new thinking for the next decade. Yet it seems very much like everything else that we have ever seen before. It is long on things we "must" do, making it read like an early new...
read moreDiscussing Ireland’s exit from the bailout on Newstalk’s Pat Kenny Show
Starting from time: 28.40.
read moreARCHIVES 2012
Ten global market calls for 2014
Today, as there will be lots of commentary on Ireland, let's go large, gain altitude and look at the broad global economic canvas, to see what is likely to happen in 2014. Making forecasts is risky business, but so too is life - and as return is the opposite of risk,...
read moreWhat we’ve learned from the past year — and where we are heading
Now that we are at the end of the year, here are a few things that 2013 taught us about economics, how our economy is doing and what determines where it goes from here. HOUSES AND PROPERTY PRICES This was the year the property market started showing signs of life. Two...
read moreOfficial Europe is in denial
What’s worse? Having to listen to a Portuguese communist telling us that the Euro was a victim of Ireland? Or having to listen to our own guy, when the EU has just nailed his ass to a post, telling us there is “no row” between Ireland and the EU President? I don’t...
read moreThe economy cannot be transformed by ‘doing nothing’, Enda
The Government's new economic strategy was unveiled yesterday. It is supposed to outline new thinking for the next decade. Yet it seems very much like everything else that we have ever seen before. It is long on things we "must" do, making it read like an early new...
read moreDiscussing Ireland’s exit from the bailout on Newstalk’s Pat Kenny Show
Starting from time: 28.40.
read moreARCHIVES 2011
The irrationality of it all
Over the past few days, I have received all sorts of economic forecasts of 2013 penned by economists in large financial outfits who are confidently telling me what is going to happen next year. Most of these guys were the same people who didn’t foresee this crisis,...
read moreParadox at the heart of the American way
Can you imagine if all the casual sociopaths that you knew in school, the sort of lads that you’d generally give a wide berth, could buy guns with the same ease as they buy Mars bars or laptops? Imagine if all the small time psychopathic drug dealers, not the big...
read moreMarian Finucane Show
Spent Sunday morning on Marian Finucane's show, with Maureen Gaffney, Brendan Howlin, Tom McGurk, Stephen O'Byrnes & Philip O'Connor, discussing last week's news. Part 1 & Part...
read moreBBC Northern Ireland: Spotlight
I recently had the weird experience of being sandwiched between Gerry Kelly of Sinn Fein and Jim Allister of the Traditional Unionist Voice. Don't ask! Ahead of my seasonal visit to Belfast this week and amid the furore over the Union Jack, here's a funny reminder of...
read moreMortgage debt deal can prevent ‘default disease’ from spreading
By far the most important statistic to come out in Ireland in the past few days is yet more evidence of the relentless rise in the number of people falling into mortgage arrears. Since 2006, this column has been arguing that the inverse of a house price bubble is a...
read moreARCHIVES 2010
We still have the financial means to save ourselves
If we separated the banking system's debt from the rest of the State, we could borrow easily on international markets Yesterday, I got into a Dublin taxi and started nattering away about the usual, the weather, the football and, of course, the state of the kip. "How...
read moreBurning the bus drivers
Last Wednesday evening, in thick snow, as cars slid and sneaked tentatively past the wonderful Church of Ireland church In Monkstown - the one built like a chess set - I hopped on the 7 bus. The driver was courteous and good humoured as he ferried dozens of people...
read moreLast-gasp bluff is now a debt sentence for us all
Tonight I am heading to see 'Scrooge' at the Grand Canal Theatre. I have to reveal an interest and not a little bit of fatherly pride as my daughter plays one of the children. She has been excited all month by this and of course, the whole family now know all the...
read moreTalking about a revolution
What is it? What is the difference between Donegal and Tyrone? And I don’t just mean in Gaelic football. Last Friday morning, I was trying to put my finger - or, more accurately, my foot - on it. Yes, it is something tangible. Crossing the bridge between Lifford and...
read moreSeparate bank from state debt or else face econocide
We are only fiscally delinquent when we attach our banks to the people, so we should cut them loose The 13.00 train from Waterford to Dublin pulls out bang on time in glorious sunshine and sneaks its way up the River Suir before turning right and heading inland,...
read moreARCHIVES 2009
Life’s a beach for Ireland’s latest ‘Generation Exodus’
Earlier this year I was working in Australia and spent some time at the famous Bondi Beach where it became obvious to me that there were two types of people there.
read moreLet’s give away big two banks
This time last year, this column predicted that Anglo Irish Bank would be nationalised within weeks. That came to pass in late January. At the time, the mainstream view was that Anglo could limp on, but this was codswallop. The reason for the nationalisation was...
read moreBanking chief will face deep opposition to reform
The easy-credit drug was pushed from the top, right down to the poor debt junkies at the bottom
Could Patrick Honohan be our Noel Browne? Could Honohan’s inquiry into the fiasco of the banking mess be the 21st century equivalent of Browne’s Mother and Child scheme?
read moreSet our entrepreneurs free
What are we going to do with small businesses that are flirting with bankruptcy? This week, I have had numerous ‘end-of-season’ conversations with businesspeople about the state of the nation. One of the recurring subjects was what are we going to do with the thousands of businesses that are close to going bust.
read moreCountry on doomed course with ‘insiders’ at the helm
In recent weeks I’ve been travelling around the country, talking to people and listening to ideas about how best to get out of this mess. What is coming up in all conversation is the sense that the insiders in Ireland are getting away with it and the outsiders are being asked to take most of the pain.
read moreARCHIVES 2008
Nationalisation of Anglo could actually be a help
The risk now is reputational risk. Credible institutions will simply not want to be associated with an outfit like Anglo Irish Bank.
read moreBotched bank job is the economics of Noddyland
Brian Lenihan is the Marie Antoinette of Irish politics. He has just done a deal with the management of the Irish banks which even the bewigged last queen of France (bred into the regime, like Lenihan) would not have tried to get away with.
read moreIreland Inc gets innovative
The government is finally getting it. The €500 million innovation fund announced last Thursday is an enormously influential and intelligent move. In years to come, it may even be seen as Whitakeresque in its prescience. For the first time in a long while, we have a vision of this country that complements what is good in the economy and, more importantly, sees beyond the current malaise. In the weekend where the depth of the problems in our banking system were laid bare, it is encouraging to see that Taoiseach Brian Cowen has the capacity to think about the future.
read more€10bn bailout not enough without reforming banks
The bank bailout just announced is simply not enough to right the wrongs in our financial system. And yet it is all we have.
read moreLenihan must take responsibility
Has anyone broken the news to finance minister Brian Lenihan that he owns the banks? So far, this fact appears to be unclear to the minister and his civil servants.
read moreARCHIVES 2007
We must begin the culture debate
Ireland has to recognise that immigration is eventually going to clash with a slowing economy.
read moreAs a nation, we’ve given up our three core values
Next year will give us the opportunity to ask ourselves, after 10 years of an economic boom, who are we? Our minds will be focussed on this existential question by yet another EU referendum. Where do we want Ireland to go? What sort of EU commitment suits us now? Whether we vote yes or no, it is a positive thing that a country should have discussions with itself from time to time. My hunch (and its only a hunch) is that we might vote no as we did to the Maastricht Treaty before the government told us that the no vote didn’t count and we would have to vote again. The reasons for this are both historic and contemporary.
read moreFinancial markets struggle as banks keep passing the parcel
Worrying events in the US, added to an already paranoid financial sector following the sub-prime crisis, have left market traders in a state of anxiety.
read moreThe office bash: a lesson in losing our decorum
The traffic is brutal as always on the Western Road. The squeaky sound of the wipers is getting on her nerves as Miss Pencil Skirt tries, faithful Tweezerman in hand, to pluck her eyebrows — which is difficult when you are in first gear, foot permanently on the clutch, avoiding the account director in his Five Series who is trying to cut her up.
read moreReaching for Starbucks in Shanghai
The growing appetite of young Chinese workers for all things western, including dairy products, is having a profound effect on global agriculture.
read moreARCHIVES 2006
Make politicians accountable for antiquated road network
The other day, I visited a highly profitable multinational company in the west of Ireland. The complex was high-spec, the workers well-paid and well-educated. Despite (or maybe because of) being in a non-unionised plant, workers’ terms and conditions were far better than most heavily unionised workplaces.
read moreNation of adults now behaving just like spoilt little children
Now that you’ve splurged, given, received, admired, gushed, drunk, gorged and financed it all on the “never never”, let’s take stock. Will 2007 be a good or bad year? What will determine success or failure and, most importantly, will we continue on the path which we have trodden since 2000 – the one of ever-increasing debt, higher house prices, more immigration and more congestion? In short, will the affluent trajectory which has catapulted modern Ireland forward continue? Will the election be won on the simple slogan “it’s the economy, stupid” or will some other imperative grab us?
read moreChildren are chomping their way to an epidemic
For anyone who has first-hand experience of the debilitating effects of diabetes – particularly in the old – a survey this week which reveals the prevalence of obesity in children makes disturbing reading.
read moreTake care of the littlest ones and generations will benefit
Do teachers make better parents? Do children of teachers have better chances of working and beating the system?
read moreThe road to nowhere
‘I can always tell the weather in Dublin by the annoying sound of wipers, swishing back and forth incessantly. It drives me mad’’.
read moreARCHIVES 2005
Catholic Ireland has turned economically Protestant
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”
This is one of the few Bible parables I remember from school. The image jumped – or rather waddled – out of the page at me.
read moreIreland should learn from US immigration
In the 1950s and 1960s, black Americans moved into the middle classes at a rate not experienced before or since. When seen though the lens of 1967, it would have been logical to foresee the American black future as a middle-class one, as represented by The Cosby Show, Toni Morrison and Condoleezza Rice. Yet it did not turn out like that.
read moreBudget for the baby-boomers
Brian Cowen would look great with a soft perm, don’t you think? He would cut a dash in a pair of bottle green, high-waist parallels or snugly fitted into a Bay City Rollers bomber jacket.
read moreAnnual budget ballyhoo is much ado about nothing
In 1990, the Central Bank’s entire economic fraternity crammed into a small office and giddily jotted down figures to assess the impact of the various numbers pronounced by the minister for finance.
read moreWe all contribute to the rip-off
When you touch down in Dublin after your winter break in the sun, the purchasing power of your euro drops considerably. What happens to debase the currency once you pass passport controls at Dublin, Cork or Shannon?
read moreARCHIVES 2004
The great toll bridge rip-off
This article, like every other one in this newspaper and indeed almost every sentence in every book you read in English, will have been typed with a QWERTY keyboard, named after the first six letters on the top left-hand side of the keyboard. Amazing as it may sound, this keyboard was designed in 1873 as an exercise in anti-engineering.
read moreHold onto the sackcloth and ashes
The biblical expression “sackcloth and ashes” has been bandied about quite a bit these days.
Coming from Ian Paisley it may sound appropriate.
read moreLike ancient Rome, we’re in a sea of borrowing
Cleopatra was born in September 68 BC. The same year, Pompey (who was eventually to be murdered in Cleopatra’s kingdom of Egypt) finally conquered all of Spain.
read morePassing over the old guard
Is corporate Ireland about to skip a generation? Will thirty-something hotshots take over at board and chief executive level and rob Ireland’s corporate fifty-somethings of their inheritance?
read moreTruth about the Celtic Tiger
Over the years, many Irish politicians, industrialists and public servants have tried, under various guises, to take credit for the Celtic Tiger.
read moreARCHIVES 2003
Lights are on, but is there anyone in the government’s offices?
There are 31 sets of traffic lights between my house and the Grand Canal – a distance of about seven miles. Is this a record? Well, it must be close
read moreLet’s institute baptism by state
A few years ago a mate told of a brilliant christening he had been to in Fermanagh
read moreStupid workers are Ireland’s stupid future, unless we change
First on your butt . . . giz a drag . . . stop hokeing, don’t put a horn on the butt . . .
read moreDread thoughts in a time of war
Al Qaeda back in business, George Bush holed up in Buckingham Palace
read moreA lesson about benchmarking
Who runs this place: the government or the teachers? The teachers, of course
read moreARCHIVES 2002
Money gets us what we want — but do we really need it?
Aristotle made the ancient distinction between ‘needs’ — objects that we must have to survive, such as food, shelter, clothes and other essentials — and `wants’, which are those things we want to make us feel superior to others
read moreRush hour grind symbolises a triumph for non-thinking
The very idea of people stuck in self-contained metal capsules with radios blaring and tempers flaring will appear as preposterous to the next generation as treating headaches with leeches does to us
read moreIs concern for the poor really an expression of our self-interest?
Internationally, the anti-globalisation movement purports to be on the side of the poor (as does the pro-globalisation/trade movement).
read moreMcCreevy: lucky accountant or supply-side economic guru?
According to convention, McCreevy’s choices are between raising taxes or cutting expenditure when faced with the present budgetary crisis
read moreGermany’s elderly savers gave Ireland’s young a free lunch
A couple of years ago, geneticists using DNA tracing came up with a genetic map of Britain
read moreARCHIVES 2001
Euro may do better without Britain
In England, the fancy French train snails through the Kent countryside at around 80 kilometres an hour, shuddering periodically on second-rate, privatised infrastructure (supplied by the now bankrupt Railtrack).
read moreHow to build a successful empire
Next week is the 400th anniversary of the battle of Kinsale in which the English monarchy defeated Gaelic Ireland. This English victory marked the beginning of the remarkable story of the British Empire.
read moreLife after the bubble bursts
In fact, there is a direct link between the discovery of the dead refugees in Wexford, the amount of borrowed cash spent at the tills in the next week and the price of houses in Dublin. All three are products of globalisation and will change utterly how this economy and society works over the coming years.
read moreAn arcane and irrelevant ritual
The bank’s entire economic fraternity crammed into a small office and giddily jotted down figures to assess the impact of the various numbers pronounced by the minister.
read moreLet’s talk the tiger back to life
Economic fundamentalism is alive and well in Ireland.
Every day, as evidence of the hard landing mounts, a soothing spin is being manufactured which dismisses worries about the economy. The spin contends that a slump is unlikely here because the economic fundamentals are very strong. Let’s call the subscribers to this creed the ‘fundamentalists’.
read moreARCHIVES 2000
Eircom shareholders are speculators, not investors
“Nothing so undermines your judgement as the sight of your neighbour getting rich,” wrote JP Morgan in 1905. As I write, a telecom company is digging up the street outside the window, laying cables, promising me the world from my living room in a matter of months. The gouging out of Ireland’s road network is happening in every town and has been for the past six months at least.
read moreRaise your glasses to more inflation and higher wages
This year’s Christmas message is that most of you are being ripped off. Difficult to accept but there you go. Despite the wage increases announced to keep the PPF together, Irish workers are selling themselves far too cheaply when compared to their continental neighbours. In doing so, workers are subsidising owners of capital, particularly foreign owners of capital employed in Ireland.
read moreEnvious east will take its piece of European action
‘I’m sorry Mr Mec Villiams, but without a visa you can’t enter Yugoslavia.” There was a pause as he surveyed the empty hall. Then he continued in fluent English: “However, as there are no more flights out this evening, you might be able to stay here.”
read moreThis borrowing binge is blowing our bubble
News footage from Britain in 1987 shows champagne-swilling Hooray Henrys corking Bolly in celebration of Nigel Lawson’s tax-cutting budget. For many, this landmark budget was the culmination of Mrs Thatcher’s revolution and the high point of Lawson’s career.
read moreWorking suburbs will turn cities inside out
In 1987, Steve Martin and John Candy starred in a movie about two all-American Dads desperately trying to get home for Thanksgiving. Planes Trains and Automobiles went on (rather inexplicably) to be one of the biggest films of the year with an “it could happen to you” message in the varied transport disasters befalling two unlikely bedfellows on a filthy late November night.
read more