The David McWilliams Podcast

What does golf tell us about money, power, and the way economies work? From billion-dollar sponsorship deals to the rise of LIV Golf, from Tiger Woods to Trump’s golf courses, the fairways of golf are lined with lessons about globalisation, soft power, and the business of status. In this episode, we tee off on the economics of golf, how a game that looks leisurely on the surface is actually a high-stakes arena of geopolitics, big business, and class. Along the way we explore why Ireland punches above its weight in the sport, why golf courses matter for land use and housing, and why golf has always been about more than chasing a little white ball around a field.This is a special bonus episode from Sky Sports. Watch all 3 days of The Ryder Cup exclusively live on Sky Sports. Upgrade today or Stream live with NOW - Available without a contract Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Between 250,000-300,000 tourists land on the island every year, 2,500 a day in summer, and yet it still feels authentic, alive, and deeply Irish. In this episode, we ask: how do remote places like Inishmore thrive in today’s economy, while once-wealthy regions like France’s Île de Ré struggle with emptying out? We dig into the wild history of cod and salt (the currency of empires), why Ireland salted beef instead of fish, and how the Aran Islands are now punching above their weight in the global experience economy. From lobster-pot pubs to the death of distance, we explore what makes people pay not just for goods and services, but for memory, tribe, and authenticity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the solution to Ireland’s housing crisis has been sitting on our doorstep all along? We dive into the Danish model of cooperative housing, where 7% of Danes live in co-ops, and a full third of Copenhageners do too, and explore how the GAA, with its 2,200 clubs and pristine community pitches in every village, could spearhead something similar here. Forget developer margins and speculative bubbles: in Denmark, a co-op share might cost €70–100k, with monthly housing costs around €800, compared to a private flat at €400k and €1,200 rent. We talk about the power of collective ownership, intergenerational communities, and why housing is really about dignity, not speculation. Along the way, we get into Jim Gavin’s presidential bid, Fianna Fáil’s GAA connection, and why our presidency has become more like Ireland’s Got Talent than a serious constitutional role.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

AI investment is exploding: the “Magnificent Seven” of Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, Tesla, and NVIDIA, are ploughing almost 7% of US GDP into AI and data centres. That’s the same scale as the US housing boom in 2006, and greater than the dot-com bubble at its peak. Today, just seven firms make up 34% of the S&P 500, the highest concentration in history. Earnings per share in these companies grew 37% last year, compared to just 6% in the rest of the index. But history warns us, RCA in the 1920s, dot-coms in the 1990s, that transformative technologies can change the world while destroying fortunes. The question now: is AI the next revolution, or the next bubble waiting to burst? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Broadcast from Île de Ré, we dive into France’s mounting fiscal mess and political paralysis. With Macron a lame-duck, bond markets charging Paris more than Athens, and a nationwide strike looming, we ask: could Europe’s cornerstone become its weakest link? We unpack France’s towering state-and-semi-state debts, why Japan can print and Paris can’t, the ECB’s “will they/won’t they” backstop if Le Pen takes power, and how a sovereignist turn could trigger a rewrite of France’s constitution, goodbye Fifth Republic, hello Sixth. Along the way: Anglo-Saxon doom-mongering, De Gaulle’s Jupiterian legacy, contagion math, and why life in “paradise” can still feel like purgatory. Big stakes, bigger history, and a very French cliff-hanger. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We took economics to a music festival, and somehow packed the tent. In this Electric Picnic highlights episode from Mindfield, we rock up bleary-eyed and buzzing, then dive straight into the big stuff: what Trump’s assault on America’s institutions means for money, markets, and the rest of us. We map the new super-cycle from post-war social democracy to Reagan-Thatcher finance, to today’s populist reboot, and why we think the US is flirting with a fiscal, monetary, and dollar crunch. Closer to home, we ask why Ireland looks rich on paper but feels poor in reality. In between, we tell the story of the 1992 currency crisis, a lo-fi mission to the Dorchester, and accidentally swapping the Central Bank for UBS and because we were literally in a field surrounded by stages, we tackle the music economy: streaming’s winner-takes-all logic, Daniel Ek’s “music costs almost zero,” algorithms that feed nostalgia over novelty, and why culture only renews when the young can afford to create.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is the US drifting into Peronism? We trace the playbook, tariffs and import substitution, national champions, censorship-by-intimidation, and a war on independent institutions, and map it onto Trump’s America: sacking a Fed governor, menacing J-Powell, firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, deploying the National Guard, and the Treasury taking a slice of Intel. Along the way, we tell the family story that makes the point better than any chart: two Italian brothers leave Lombardy in 1950, one goes to Argentina (then the world’s 7th-richest country), the other to the US. Eighty years later, identical genes, opposite outcomes. Why? Institutions. We uncover why “markets” aren’t a moral compass; why an emerging-market test now applies to America; what Turkey teaches about politicos capturing central banks; and how a weaker, politicised dollar would rattle Bretton Woods, push allies away, and turn a stock market priced for perfection into kindling. It’s part musical, part macro: from Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina to Don’t Cry for Me, Oklahoma. We’ll explain how it starts, how it ends, and what the rest of us in Europe should do while the richest third-world country in history experiments on the global monetary system. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ten years ago, Angela Merkel opened Germany’s doors to more than 1.1 million asylum seekers in a single year with the words “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do this”). Today, Germany has over 3.4 million asylum seekers, about 4% of its population, and politics, society, and culture have been transformed. In this episode, we dive into what really happened over the last decade. We talk with historian Katja Hoyer about the numbers, the culture clashes, the rise of the AfD from a fringe party to polling at 25%, and the everyday realities in towns where the refugee population doubled overnight. From schools where 80–90% of kids now have migrant backgrounds, to half of Germany’s welfare claimants being non-Germans, the story is as much about economics and integration as it is about politics. We pull it apart: the hopes, the backlash, and the future of immigration policy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The state has quietly become the biggest buyer of new homes. In fact, builders like Cairn Homes now have forward sales of nearly €946 million, much of it locked in by government deals. That means up to 80–85% of new builds are being bought by the state, at an average price of €382,000 per unit, while wages lag far behind rising house prices, which jumped 7.8% last year. So who’s being pushed out? First-time buyers. Instead of solving the housing crisis, the state is inflating prices, nationalising the property market by stealth, and creating what could be the most expensive council houses in the world. In this episode, we join the dots between Dutch disease, tax windfalls, political PR, and the future of Irish society. Why are nurses, teachers and young couples emigrating when billions are gushing into Ireland? And how did estate agents, once kings of the market, become an endangered species? We break it all down, numbers, history, and politics, to show why the government itself is now the main culprit behind Ireland’s housing mess. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After nearly 11 years of war, Putin’s maximalist demands have shrunk to a sliver of land in Donetsk, a pyrrhic victory after countless lives lost and millions displaced. But while the Kremlin clings to a symbolic scrap of territory, we explore whether Ukraine’s true future lies not in NATO membership but in becoming what political economist Harold Laswell once called a “garrison state.” What does that mean? Think of countries like Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, or even Finland in 1940: highly militarised, heavily armed by allies, but able to survive and rebuild under constant threat. Could this be Ukraine’s path, a nation of 40 million people with a vast agricultural base and heavy industry, rebuilt under an American security umbrella and billions in European aid? We pull apart the history: from the Treaty of Moscow (1940) that fixed Finland’s borders for decades, to Eisenhower’s warning of the military–industrial complex, to the Peloponnesian War’s clash of Sparta and Athens. Can democracy thrive in a garrison state? Is Europe ready to bankroll Ukraine’s reconstruction? And will turning Ukraine into a military bulwark finally secure peace, or only prepare the ground for the next war? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Have we caught a case of Dutch Disease? Ireland’s dependence on foreign multinationals looks less like a golden goose and more like Japanese knotweed, invasive, overwhelming, and slowly strangling everything around it. Yes, the jobs are plentiful and the tax coffers are bulging, but the hidden costs are piling up: small businesses being elbowed out, rents spiralling, public spending ballooning, and a state increasingly captured by the very companies it courts. We trace how multinationals now pay almost 90% of our corporate tax, how graduates are sucked into big tech rather than start-ups, and how housing and wages are being distorted in the process. Ireland’s economy, once sold as nimble and entrepreneurial, is bending instead to the whims of boardrooms in California and Basel rather than Leinster House. Along the way we draw comparisons to the Premier League eclipsing Irish football, Trump’s short-term deal-making on the world stage, and even brothel keepers in Saigon.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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