The David McWilliams Podcast

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The David McWilliams Podcast

David McWilliams & John Davis

586 episodes

5 days ago

The aim of this weekly podcast is to make economics easy, uncomplicated and accessible. With the world at a political, technological and financial tipping point, economics has never been so important to all of us and yet, it’s made inaccessible and complicated by so many.

I’ve always thought what is complicated is rarely important and what is important is rarely complicated.

That will be our motto.

Every week we are going to tease out some big economic or political issue facing us, not just here in Ireland but in Europe and further afield. Globalisation has brought us all together. We all face similar challenges whether you live in Dublin, London, Minnesota or Milan.

If you would like to enjoy all of our content ad-free and have early access to episodes, subscribe to DMCW+ on Apple Podcast.

If you would like to support the show, please consider becoming a patron at www.patreon.com/DavidMcWilliams.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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All content for The David McWilliams Podcast is the property of David McWilliams & John Davis and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

The aim of this weekly podcast is to make economics easy, uncomplicated and accessible. With the world at a political, technological and financial tipping point, economics has never been so important to all of us and yet, it’s made inaccessible and complicated by so many.

I’ve always thought what is complicated is rarely important and what is important is rarely complicated.

That will be our motto.

Every week we are going to tease out some big economic or political issue facing us, not just here in Ireland but in Europe and further afield. Globalisation has brought us all together. We all face similar challenges whether you live in Dublin, London, Minnesota or Milan.

If you would like to enjoy all of our content ad-free and have early access to episodes, subscribe to DMCW+ on Apple Podcast.

If you would like to support the show, please consider becoming a patron at www.patreon.com/DavidMcWilliams.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show more...

Episodes (20/586)

The David McWilliams Podcast

America’s Dutch Disease: How Debt Became the World’s Hottest Export

We’ve always known Dutch Disease as what happens when a country strikes oil or gas and accidentally hollows out the rest of its economy. But what if the United States’ great “resource discovery” wasn’t energy, it was debt? This week we talk to Brendan Greeley about his brilliant framework for understanding America’s political economy: the world’s insatiable appetite for U.S. Treasuries has turned debt into a commodity tap Washington can turn on at will. We explore how this constant borrowing props up the dollar, guts manufacturing, swells Wall Street, and fuels a political scramble for control of the spigot, with eerie parallels to Ireland’s own multinational tax windfall. Along the way, we ask why old economic theories can’t explain the dollar’s resilience, why quality of spending matters more than quantity, and what history says about how this all might end.

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4 days ago

40 minutes 9 seconds

The David McWilliams Podcast

From The Godfather to the Blockchain: How Easy Money Seduced Wall Street (and the White House)

We’ve always said to understand the economy, you have to understand human nature, and nothing reveals that better than watching the biggest players do a Godfather-style U-turn for easy money. In this episode, we connect the dots between Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone and Jamie Dimon’s pivot from calling crypto “a fraud” to using it as loan collateral, all while the President of the United States holds stakes in coins of his own. We unpack how the $2 trillion crypto market has morphed from anti-Wall Street rebellion to one of the most powerful lobby groups in America, funnelling cash to Congress to rewrite the rules. Along the way, we lift the lid on stablecoins, explain why money is a public good (not a private printing press for the TikTok age), and ask what happens if the dollar’s last line of defence, the Fed, gets taken out. Life imitating art imitating life… and the ending might not be pretty.

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6 days ago

26 minutes 46 seconds

The David McWilliams Podcast

Japan: Lost in Translation Part Two

We all love a boom story, until it turns into a 40‑year hangover. In 1995, Japan’s nominal GDP hit its high‑water mark. It took until the 2020s to get back there. Debt has exploded to 250% of GDP. The population is shrinking so fast that by 2070, one in three Japanese will have vanished, down from 128 million in 2010 to just 87 million. What went wrong? A bursting property bubble, a banking system in denial, and a culture where shame trumps change. For four decades, Japan has been the economic equivalent of a superstar striker refusing to retire; still wearing the jersey, but stuck on the bench.

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1 week ago

41 minutes 13 seconds

The David McWilliams Podcast

Japan: From Feudal Isolation to Economic Superpower

This week marks 80 years since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we’re taking a deep dive into Japan’s extraordinary economic story. In part one of our two-part series, we explore how Japan went from a feudal, isolated society to one of the most powerful economies in the world. With our guest Russell Jones, a brilliant economist and my old boss, we look at the Meiji Restoration, post-war reconstruction under America’s wing, and the wild property and stock market bubble of the 1980s. Along the way, we chat about Trump’s war on economic statistics, a touch of Cold War nuclear tension, and even a special Electric Picnic-related announcement!

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1 week ago

43 minutes 12 seconds

The David McWilliams Podcast

Generation Rent: How Housing Costs Are Exporting Ireland's Future

This week we talk to Matthew Ruddy, a young Dublin entrepreneur who did everything right - built his first business at 17, worked alongside the lads at Dogpatch Labs. Except he's now living in Brisbane, not Dublin. Matthew's story captures what's happening to an entire generation. These aren't traditional emigrants heading to London building sites, they're highly educated risk-takers who desperately want to stay home but can't afford to take entrepreneurial risks when rent costs two grand a month. The statistics are staggering: home ownership among 25-34 year olds has fallen by 48% since the mid-90s; the highest decline in the world. This housing catastrophe is causing a mental health crisis among young adults in English-speaking countries, with Ireland leading the pack. It's creating a vicious cycle where young talent either takes safe multinational jobs or emigrates entirely, starving Irish startups of the people they need. Meanwhile, we're left wondering where all the young entrepreneurs have gone. They're everywhere but home.

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2 weeks ago

33 minutes 16 seconds

The David McWilliams Podcast

Did Europe Just Surrender to Trump?

Not so fast! We unpack the surprise EU-US trade deal that has everyone shouting sellout but we see it differently. In this episode, we take a deeper look at what really went down in the Trump-triggered tariff negotiations. The headlines scream defeat: Europe folds, Trump wins, 15% tariffs slapped on all EU goods while the US gets full access to the European market. But is that the full story? We break it down, the EU runs a $200 billion trade surplus with the US. So why would they agree to this? Because sometimes in poker, the smartest move is folding a bad hand to fight another day. We also lift the lid on the civil war brewing within Europe: the Commission vs. the member states, nationalism vs. federalism, free trade idealism vs. geopolitical realism. Germany wants to protect its cars. France its booze. Ireland? Our pharma sector’s now hanging in the balance. We talk street-fighting Trump vs. rulebook Europe, why this deal might actually be good news for investment in Ireland.

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2 weeks ago

32 minutes 46 seconds

The David McWilliams Podcast

When the West Woke Up: How Yugoslavia Fell Apart

This week, we take you back to the final years of Yugoslavia, a country that exploded into one of the bloodiest wars Europe has seen since WWII. We trace how ethnic tensions, decades of suppressed rivalries, and opportunistic leaders tore the region apart, while Europe watched on, paralysed. We explore how the Serb army launched brutal assaults across Croatia and Bosnia, committing acts of ethnic cleansing that left over 100,000 Bosnians dead, often at the hands of their own neighbours. For years, the West hesitated. But after a dramatic shift in Washington, the U.S. stepped in, arming the Croats, launching air strikes, and ultimately brokering the Dayton Accords to end the war. In this episode, we follow the story from Vukovar to Sarajevo, from Belgrade backroom deals to Clinton’s White House. We explain how Croatia won the war but lost nearly a million people to emigration, how Serbia suffered the worst hyperinflation ever recorded, and how Slovenia quietly became the EU’s success story, set to overtake the UK in GDP per capita within five years. We also reflect on the strange persistence of empire: Russia still backs Serbia, Turkey stands with Bosnia, and the West never really forgot its favourites.

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3 weeks ago

46 minutes 31 seconds

The David McWilliams Podcast

Why Ireland Must Rethink Its Economic Future; Fast

In this week’s episode, we dive headfirst into the economic storm clouds gathering over Ireland, and the urgent need to act before we get soaked. We explore how U.S. tariffs, Trumpian MAGA economics, and a Europe shrinking on the global stage all combine to put Ireland in the danger zone. We break it down simply: Trump’s $50 billion in new tariffs? Instead of hurting China, they’re taxing Americans. If America turns fully inward, the knock-on effect for Ireland could be devastating. We're the most U.S.-adjacent economy in Europe, and with 150 billion euro sitting in Irish bank deposits and 80% of our corporate tax coming from foreign companies, we're dangerously reliant on the goodwill of multinationals who may not stick around. So we ask: what’s Ireland’s Plan B? We look back to the IFSC and Ardnacrusha, bold, nation-shaping moves that changed our future. We ask why we’re not doing the same now. We speak to Patrick Walsh from Dogpatch Labs, who tells us that we’ve got the ingredients for an innovation boom, talent, capital, multinational know-how, but not the policies to unlock it. Right now, France has taken the lead on AI. Meta's accelerator is in Paris, not Dublin. Why? Leadership. Focus. Vision. Meanwhile, Ireland dithers over housing and passes symbolic laws that could alienate our biggest economic ally.

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3 weeks ago

38 minutes 13 seconds

The David McWilliams Podcast

The Ghosts of Yugoslavia: Borders, Bankers & Balkan Ghosts

In this episode, we dive headfirst into one of Europe’s most brutal and under-discussed chapters: the collapse of Yugoslavia. Live from Croatia, where the scars of that war still linger, and where, 30 years on, the economic, political, and human fallout continues to echo across the continent. We explore how hyperinflation, sparked by debt-fuelled mismanagement and ethnic tension, helped tear the country apart. At one point, Yugoslavia’s army was the largest in Europe. Today, its people make up the single largest intra-EU migrant group. In Ireland alone, over 40,000 Croats were issued PPS numbers in the last five years. We walk you through the tangled roots of nationalism, the rotating presidency that doomed a federation, and how the ghost of Tito, who told Stalin to feck off in 1946, still haunts the region. We also talk Jamie Dimon, who popped up in Dublin last week declaring “Europe has lost,” and we break down what that means in GDP terms: 25 years ago, US and EU GDP per capita were neck-and-neck—now the US is 25% ahead. We trace that back to 1995 and ask: What if Yugoslavia was the first warning shot?

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1 month ago

41 minutes 38 seconds

The David McWilliams Podcast

Can We Cope With This Level of Immigration?

This week on the podcast, we take on the two biggest issues shaping our future: immigration and housing. We begin with the looming threat of U.S. tariffs, which could hit by August 1st. A 30% levy would be catastrophic for Ireland, the most open economy in the world, with nearly €600 billion in imports and exports annually. While China retaliates in unison, Europe squabbles over wine, cars, and Big Tech. Meanwhile, Ireland, so dependent on U.S. multinationals, stands massively exposed. We then dive into the far knottier issue: immigration. Between April 2022 and 2023, 141,000 immigrants arrived in Ireland. Only 30,000 houses were built in the same period. You don’t need a PhD to see the problem, demand has tripled, while supply has collapsed. House prices are up 7% in the last three months alone, now approaching half a million euros. Construction is down, despite a 47% increase in government spending since COVID. We break the numbers down: of the 141,000, roughly 90,000 arrived via active government policy; visas, asylum, humanitarian aid. With only two people per home on average, we’d need to build 80,000 houses per year to keep up. We’re building less than half that.

We’re not arguing against immigration, we need it. But policy without planning leads to crisis. If we don’t start managing immigration with data and foresight, we’ll drift into chaos.

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1 month ago

32 minutes 38 seconds

The David McWilliams Podcast

Who Wants to Live Forever? The Economics of Immortality, Tech Bros & Tír na nÓg

This week, we start with Oasis and end in Silicon Valley, via Tír na nÓg. We’re talking about the economics of not dying, and how tech billionaires are pouring billions into that dream. From Oasis belting Live Forever to Irish mythology’s take on eternal youth, we ask: why are we so obsessed with dodging death? We explore the surreal story of Brian Johnson, the tech bro spending $2 million a year trying to reverse ageing. Vegan diet, 100 supplements a day, teenage blood transfusions… all in an effort to achieve his goal of slowing his biological clock by 7.5 months every year. Meanwhile, he's founded a Don't Die movement with Discord channels, Blueprint protocols, and longevity summits. We dig into the money behind it all: the anti-ageing industry is already worth $70 billion and is projected to hit $140 billion by 2034. Google’s Calico Labs, Bezos’s $3 billion bet on Altos Labs, and a biotech unicorn called Cambrian Bio (valued at $1.8 billion) are all racing to crack the longevity code. What kind of world are we building? Is this the new Tír na nÓg, a fantasy only for the rich? We imagine a world where ageing is optional… but only if you can afford it.

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1 month ago

30 minutes 26 seconds

The David McWilliams Podcast

Trieste and the City of the Future

Trieste is a city that’s belonged to everyone, and no one. This week, we go walking through a place that’s been Austrian, Italian, Yugoslav, and, at one point, technically run by the United Nations. It's a port city without a hinterland, a European crossroads where empires once collided, and identities blurred. What if this strange, stateless city is actually a glimpse of the future? Trieste thrived when borders were open and trade was fluid. It declined when nationalism took hold and lines were drawn. In a world now swinging back toward protectionism, identity politics, and hard frontiers, Trieste’s story becomes a warning. We explore how the city gave rise to Freud, Joyce, and Svevo, why it drove Mussolini mad, and what it teaches us about globalisation, ambiguity, and the power of being in-between. It’s a story about ports, poetry, and politics, where geography becomes destiny, and liminality becomes strength. As cities everywhere wrestle with who they are and who they serve, Trieste might just be the original global city: chaotic, contradictory, and decades ahead of its time.

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1 month ago

37 minutes 59 seconds

The David McWilliams Podcast

Who Killed the Living City?

After travelling through Montreal, Bilbao, and Vilnius, cities alive with colour, sound, and soul, I returned home and felt the contrast sharply. Dublin, like many cities across the developed world, feels hollowed out. Despite booming economic growth and over €150 billion sitting idle in savings accounts, our capital is crumbling. Streets are lifeless, dereliction is everywhere, and policy seems paralysed. So what went wrong? This week, we explore how bad incentives, not bad people, kill cities. Drawing on historical revivals like Temple Bar, we propose bold 21st-century solutions: tax breaks to bring buildings back to life, amnesties to release hoarded property, and a new savings product that lets the public invest directly in urban renewal. If the private sector won’t build, let the public fund it. Then we turn to global markets, where Trump is gearing up to fire Fed Chair Jay Powell and slash interest rates. But he may learn the hard way: the bond market, not the White House, sets the tempo. If confidence cracks, long-term interest rates could skyrocket. Urban decay and global volatility are two sides of the same economic coin. Can we change course in time?

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1 month ago

39 minutes 15 seconds

The David McWilliams Podcast

Content, Culture & the Bottom Line: How Finance is Killing the Avant-Garde

Are we living through the death of innovation? We’re back in HQ asking a tough question: has culture stagnated, and if so, is economics to blame? We explore the twin juggernauts of our age: financialisation and tech. From Florence under the Medicis to Hollywood in 2023, we trace how once-risky bets on the new have been replaced by spreadsheets and streaming algorithms. In 2023, all of the top 10 highest-grossing global films were sequels, spin-offs, or remakes. Back in 2005, 40% of top films had original scripts; now it's less than 10%. Meanwhile, only 27% of all streamed music is new, and catalogue music made up 70% of US consumption by 2021. We ask: who owns culture now? What happens when Spotify, Marvel, and private equity become the A&R men of our era? And could the rise of AI, which looks backwards by design, make this even worse? Join us as we unravel how economics may be drowning out the avant-garde.

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1 month ago

31 minutes 29 seconds

The David McWilliams Podcast

Has the Balance of Global Power Just Shifted to Israel?

Has Israel just become the undisputed power in the Middle East? After a lightning-fast 12-day conflict, oil prices fell instead of spiking, Iran backed off with symbolic missile strikes (after giving the U.S. a heads-up), and Russia is suddenly too nostalgic about its expats in Tel Aviv to pick a side. We unpack how this war, short, sharp, and stunning, shifted the entire balance of power in the region. Why didn’t the Strait of Hormuz crisis materialise? Why are markets pricing in peace while Gaza burns? And what does this all mean for Iran’s regime, which now looks more cornered than combative? We also take a surprising detour through France, exploring how language is shaped by power, and why the poor speak more languages than the rich. Is this the start of a new Middle East? Or just the next chapter in a permanent struggle?

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1 month ago

32 minutes 39 seconds

The David McWilliams Podcast

The Dollar, the Ape & the End of an Empire

Live from a packed GAA hall at the Dalkey Book Festival, this episode tackles one of the wildest questions in economics: how did humans, flimsy, anxious apes, end up running the world, and why did we invent money to do it? We dig into the evolution of money as a collective hallucination hardwired into our psychology. Along the way, we unpack how 90% of dollars exist only digitally, how the pandemic rewired our sense of value, and why the dollar’s global dominance might be nearing its final act. From Mesopotamian beer tabs to the Fed’s modern firepower, we trace the story of money as a force that built empires and could just as easily unmake them.

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1 month ago

40 minutes 5 seconds

The David McWilliams Podcast

Memoirs of an Arab Jew

In this powerful episode recorded at the Dalkey Book Festival, we sit down with Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, whose memoir The Memoirs of an Arab Jew weaves together the personal and political. Born in Baghdad and expelled to Israel, Shlaim dismantles the dominant Zionist narrative and shares a forgotten story: that of the Arab Jews, rooted in the Middle East for millennia, fluent in Arabic, and often alienated in the state built in their name. Shlaim explores British colonial meddling, the legacy of the Holocaust, and what he calls Israel’s transformation from a refuge into a settler-colonial project. He also offers explosive insights into Mossad’s alleged role in the exodus of Iraqi Jews. This is a conversation about historical amnesia, and why the trauma of the past can’t justify injustice in the present.

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2 months ago

49 minutes 45 seconds

The David McWilliams Podcast

The Islamic Enlightenment

Tensions in the Middle East are escalating, following Israel’s surprise attack on targets across Iran on Friday, and ensuing strikes between the two powers continued over the weekend. The Muslim world has often been accused of a failure to modernise and adapt. Christopher de Bellaigue disagrees and charts the forgotten story of the Islamic Enlightenment – the social movements, reforms and revolutions that transformed the Middle East from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Modern ideals and practices were embraced across the region, including the adoption of modern medicine, the emergence of women from purdah and the development of democracy. We look behind the sensationalist headlines in order to foster a genuine understanding of Islam and its relationship to the West.

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2 months ago

47 minutes 11 seconds

The David McWilliams Podcast

The Hanseatic League: Europe’s First Free Trade Zone

Forget Brussels, the first European Union was built by medieval merchants, not politicians. This week, we dive into the Hanseatic League: a loose alliance of 200 city-states that dominated trade across the Baltic and North Seas for 500 years. They pioneered free trade, built Europe’s first banking networks, and forged a multilateral model that still shapes today’s EU. Their story is also a warning. The League eventually lost out to land-based nation-states, a tension that’s alive again in today’s battles between globalists and nationalists, city-states and populist powers. Along the way, we also explore the unlikely African roots of Russia’s greatest poet, medieval slave routes linking Dublin to Iran (!), and why the architecture of Lutheran cities tells the story of global trade.

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2 months ago

36 minutes 54 seconds

The David McWilliams Podcast

Will America’s Debt Crash the Global Economy?

When Jamie Dimon warns that the U.S. bond market could "crack," it’s time to listen. This week, we dive into America’s mounting debt crisis, with U.S. debt now surpassing $34 trillion, deficits running at $2 trillion a year, and interest payments exceeding military spending. We unpack how Trump’s tax cuts, tariffs, and spending splurges are pushing the system to breaking point, and why a bond market crack could trigger a global dollar crisis.

Then we turn the lens to Ireland, where the economy is running too hot: clogged roads, soaring rents, and an influx of investment we can’t absorb. Should Ireland slow down before the next global downturn forces us to? From bond yields to blocked-up Westland Row, this episode connects the big macro shifts to the everyday pressures you feel on your commute.

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2 months ago

36 minutes 34 seconds