David McWilliams

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David McWilliams (born 1968^[1]) is an Irish economist and broadcaster. He was educated at Blackrock College, then Trinity College Dublin and the College of Europe Bruges, Belgium. Between 1990 and 1993 he was an economist at the Central Bank of Ireland. He helped draft the Irish submission to the Maastricht Treaty and also advised the authorities during the exchange rate crisis in the early 1990s.

Between 1993 and 1996 he was a director in the European Economics Department for UBS analysing, advising and investing in all major European economies and markets. At the age of 27 he became the youngest Director at UBS. McWilliams is credited with being the first economist to predict the 1990s boom in Ireland's economy. It is commonly reported that he coined the phrase "Celtic Tiger", but this is untrue. It was first used in a Morgan Stanley report of August 1994. As an economist he is arguably most famous for his repeated predictions of an Irish property price collapse every year between 1997 and 2002 (at which point he stopped publicly predicting an imminent price collapse).

From 1996 until 1998 he became the head of Emerging Markets Research for Banque Nationale de Paris. In 1999 he became the global strategist with a New York-based hedge fund Rockwest Capital.

McWilliams has also had a career as a broadcaster in Ireland. In the mid-1990s he made regular appearances as an economist on CNN, CNBC and the BBC. He presented a current affairs programme called Agenda on TV3 and has also presented that station's coverage of the Irish General Election in 2002. He hosted the breakfast show on NewsTalk 106, a Dublin radio station, from the station's beginning in 2002 until he was replaced by Eamon Dunphy in September 2004. Soon after, McWilliams started presenting The Big Bite, a topical afternoon discussion programme on the television station RTÉ One. He is also a regular columnist in The Sunday Business Post and Irish Independent newspapers. Past articles from the paper are available from his website, as well as his monthly subscription newsletter, The David McWilliams Agenda.

In November 2006 RTÉ One broadcast In Search of the Pope's Children, a three-part series examining the economic and social landscape of modern Ireland. It was presented by David McWilliams and based on his book The Pope's Children.

McWilliams style and accent, and reputation from Trinity College student days ^[2] have led many commentators to believe he is the archetypal role model for Paul Howard's Ross O'Carroll-Kelly series of books. Others have commentated on his capacity for shameless self-publicity, describing him as the David Beckham of Irish media ^[3] In 2007, McWilliams was named as a Global Young Leader by the World Economic Forum ^[4]. However, McWilliams promoted the fact to his employer in the Irish Independent in a widely leaked e-mail ^[5], omitting the fact that one of the paper's owners was on the selection committee ^[6], and not declaring who nominated him^[7].

[edit] Further reading

• David McWilliams (2005). The Pope's Children. ISBN 0-7171-4172-1.
• David Brooks (2000). Bobos in Paradise – The New Upper Class And How They Got There. ISBN 0-684-85377-9.

[edit] External links

• David McWilliams' website

[edit] References

1. ^ According to Who's Who. The Sunday Independent newspaper gives a year of 1966 in an article McWilliams is a real self-made man - he invented himself published on 13 November 2006
2. ^ See Sunday Tribune profile by Anne-Marie Hourihane, www.tribune.ie: HiCo silver, away!, published 5 November 2006
3. ^ Phoenix Magazine Vol 25, No 2 January 25-Feb 8, 2007, www.phoenix-magazine.com.
4. ^ See: http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2007/01/17/world-economic-forum-young-global-leader
5. ^ See: http://blogorrah.com/mcdreamy-bigging-up-the-mcdreaminess.html
6. ^ See comments on http://blogorrah.com/mcdreamy-bigging-up-the-mcdreaminess.html
7. ^ See: Phoenix magazine passim.