To be fair to him, his diaspora idea makes more sense in long form than in short - the last chapter of his most recent book, for example (available in all good libraries!).

I don't think he invented the Celtic Tiger phrase. Wasn't it some professor/academic type?

Well done Fergus. Good article. Unless points like these are addressed we will be drowned in "we are where we are" and lets look forward not backwards. The FF policy of building on malpractice and shady deals is like building the castle in the swamp. "The first two sank, the third burnt down toppled over and sank but the fourth one stood". So the current generation of Irish school leavers can kiss their futures goodbye and in 10 or 15 years when we have nama paid off and we get back to where we were in 1996 then the government can say we are where we are and there is no point looking back.
If this vista won't get Irish people out on the streets then there is no hope for us.

"Stop trying to be positive and constructive David, you're wasting your time. Please get back to the cribbing and moaning from the sidelines that you were so good at".

Is that about the height of it?

He's finished his book according to him on twitter. Also commented that "NAMAis most radical thing any economy has done. goes against all economic logic. is a disaster. let banks go bust. no big deal"

Don't know if anyone else has spotted this but if you look at 1980 haughey, from the 'beyond our mean's era, there's an uncanny resemblance to dmcw.

Floppy hair and all.

And you thought 'Luke, I am your father' was a shocker.

-rd

He's on a roll on twitter: http://twitter.com/davidmcw



It'll be interesting to see if he'll have an article in this weeks SBP now that he's finished his book.

And I really like those twits (or is it tweets?). Zombie banks being wound down is, IMO, the best that can happen.

ALBK and BKIR up 6% to 8% as I write. A lot of people seem very sure that whatever NAMA holds for the taxpayer,
it's good news for the banks.

DmcW's tweets are touching on the part of this that bugs me most. Having squandered the boom, Fianna Fail
are now hell bent on squandering the bust.

None of us know how to turn the economy around. None of us know if NAMA will work, or won't work.
Anyone who claims to know is a liar. We all have opinions, and at best we can look at how people's
opinions in the past panned out to see how seriously we should take them now.

What we can do is use this catastrophic event to do things that no government would get away with in
"economic peace time". We could actually fix some very serious problems with the country.

FF won't do it. And why would they? There isn't one FF TD or minister who will come out of all of this
broke, regardless of how much of an economic implosion they engineer. At the end of the day, they
don't actually grasp the scale of the problem.

-Rd

Unfortunately, from their perspective, a lot of them do grasp the extent of the problem, which is that they've got 3 years to be able to produce a magic budget or many of them are out looking for a new job. They will cling onto whatever lifeline the Brians throw at them in the meantime as to oppose would precipitate an early general election from which they can expect no mercy.

Meanhile, back in the real world . . .

What you're pointing to there is that they grasp the scale of the electoral problem, which makes sense, they are politicians.
That's what they understand.

They can't understand the economic problem because for the most part they are not economists
and they are pampered and insulated from the day to day reality.

They will claim to take advice from economists, but that's different from understanding the advice, and if those
economists depend on pleasing you in return for getting paid, then you can find ones who'll say whatever suits you.

When 46 economists wrote an open letter in the Irish times raising concerns about NAMA what was the government response?
They described the letter as "poorly drafted"

For christ's sake, the message was clear enough, and the thought that people in government are resorting to
critiquing those that disagree with them when the stakes are so high. It's frightening. It's akin to starting
the Civil War, not because of the 6 counties, but because the treaty wasn't written in iambic pentameter.

NAMA is bigger than the Treaty with the Britain. It's that big. Why on earth are we not up to our ears in a full scale debate
that includes the likes of David McWilliams and others. We are the most educated generation in the history of the state,
we live in an era of unprecedented communications technology?
Fianna Fail are treating us like we're peasant farmers huddled around wirelesses waiting for Dev to tell us all what to do.

-Rd

What I'm really getting at is that this is the only problem they care about, understanding doesn't enter into it. I'm quite sure there are 1 or 2 who do realise just how fucked we are, but if they can sell our great grandchildren to keep themselves in with a shout at the next election they'll do it anyway.

Remonds me of an AP I had years ago when I was in the Civil Service. When views on the department's annual report were solicited his, only formal response was that the glossy paper it was printed on was too shiny. True story unfortunately.

Are Paddy Power taking odds on FF recuiting David McWilliams for the next election in the same way FG recruited George Lee?

Just how stupid do you think David McWilliams is?

-Rd

The government does know how bad it is. They are shitting themselves. They haven't the balls to do what is right and get this ocuntry out of the hole that it is in.