David McWilliams' Blog

• • Paying for our banks a recipe for instability
    September 1, 2010
    I AM sitting outside a lovely bar called De Prins in Amsterdam, looking out over the canal, past the cyclists, toward Anne Frank’s house beyond. The crowds are lined up again, as they are every day, to bear witness to the most unspeakable crime and the most magnificent courage. We know that th
    
    
  • The reality finally hits home
    August 30, 2010
    ‘You want it to be one way.” ‘‘Man, stop.” “[But] it’s the other way.” The above dialogue occurs in season four of The Wire – the HBO crime series based in Baltimore, Maryland. Marlo Stanfield, a notoriously vicious drug dealer, walks into what Americans call a conveni
    
    
  • If it looks like a duck . . .
    August 23, 2010
    Last Friday, European bond markets wobbled again as investors – albeit in a thin market – got the fear. The reason apparently was, again, Greece, where reports of soaring unemployment and complete economic stagnation are fuelling worries that the Greeks will have to renegotiate their deb
    
    
  • Collapsing house prices? We ain’t seen nothing yet
    August 18, 2010
    THE most comprehensive report on the Irish property market is out and it evidences the total destruction of wealth of a certain generation. According to the wonderfully detailed work done by Ronan Lyons at Daft.ie, asking prices countrywide fell by just over 4pc in the second three months of the yea
    
    
  • Costly wearing of the green
    August 16, 2010
    Our boomtime ideology is alive and kicking – and our refusal to look to developing countries to build our economy again will be the death of us. Can Irish football tell us anything about the state of the country, and just how far we have to travel to compete at the highest level? People might
    
    
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