What If 2026 Is the Year America Leaves Us Behind?

0:03David McWilliams: Happy New Year to you. I can't believe it is 2026, but here we go. Today's podcast will be on what the new year holds for the Irish economy, Irish society, and the Irish political system. That's all coming up in a couple of minutes.

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1:15David McWilliams: To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature. This podcast is powered by Acast.

1:28Happy New Year? Happy New Year to you Mike Happy New Year to you John Or is it a Happy New Year? Well I think we should look optimistically towards the New Year and Happy New Year to you dear listener I hope Christmas went well How was your Crimbo John? It was great It was fantastic We had all the girls back home under the one roof Shouting and roaring Shouting and roaring but in a good way Dancing the whole lot Like it was great It was such crack estrogen levels off the scale and everyone happy mine included exactly yeah we adopted a Mongolian on Christmas day we did after our Genghis Khan I actually I realised you know how the real pronunciation is Genghis Khan oh really yeah we gotta keep saying it say Genghis Khan for us no so this girl who works with Lucy ah and she was she's Mongolian and she's just arrived and she was you know we're always taking in strays and waifs by the way listeners.

2:24The Mac Williams family is like a refugee camp usually. It's like a bit of a hostel. So yeah, it was great. We went to church and church. Church on Christmas morning, shams, belting other proddy hymns. Did you find God? No. I nearly found myself. But it's good. It's all part of the tradition. It's like Christmas trees. It's all part of the tradition. And then we adopted a Mongolian and we had a total laugh and then two of our Mongolian mates came, collector. So we were talking about and they were telling me something very interesting, these two lads, right? Yeah. This is after a few. Yes, I'm sure.

2:53So the two Mongolian fellas arrive into the house. Yak milk, where is it? Yeah, exactly. But they were saying that, I said, like, how come there's so many? There's 5 ,000 Mongolians in Ireland, right? Wow. That is a lot.

3:05David McWilliams: And they were saying that the two countries that they emigrate to most from Mongolia are Ireland and Korea, which I thought was so weird because they're not related at all. What's the attraction? They said Ireland and Korea are the two places that you can actually make a living. You can actually go. They're very close to the Russians, culturally. Like their alphabet is Cyrillic, even though they're an Asiatic people. Yeah, yeah. But they said, obviously, you can't go to Russia, you can't make a cross from Russia. Yeah. Even though all of them speak Russian really quite well. They hate China, which is really quite funny.

3:35Yeah, that will stand to reason. Except for many years of kicking lumps out of each other. And their place of choice is Ireland. So how do they hear about that then? How do they hear about Ireland? Because there are, I think it's back to the whole English schools. So basically the English school industry, English is a foreign language. Right. Cheers in the... Exactly. Cheers, right? His real name is not Cheers, but he's called Cheers for obvious reasons.

4:01David McWilliams: And they have networks in many, many countries. Yeah. And those networks are salespeople who are selling courses. And obviously in Mongolia, the salespeople are extremely good. And they then are getting young Mongolians to come here on these visas to learn English. Yeah. But they're also allowed work. And as a result of that, there's loads of Mongolians in hospitality. There's no direct flight from Mongolia to... No, actually, they fly to Frankfurt. Right. Okay. So Ulaanbaatar to Frankfurt, John. I would love now to go there, by the way. I'd love to go to Ulaanbaatar, yeah. Yeah, well, let's do a podcast from Mongolia, right?

4:46That'll be great. We'll be the only people going the other way. emigrate to Mongolia. And how do they find it then? How do they find Ireland? They love it. They love it. Culture shock though. Massive culture shock. But I think they are, particularly these younger people that I've met, much, much more open,

5:04David McWilliams: much more, I'm going to use this word, advisory, European, because of the Russian influence. They're not half as deferential as other Asians tend to be. Right. They tend to be shy, and to be not very voluminous, not very, very expressive. The Mongolians are just chatty, really, really chatty, very, very good fun. I can drink like fish. Unbelievable, right? And yes, I mean, Christmas Day in the refugee camp was all fine. That's brilliant. It was really good. But now, John, now we are in the new year. And this podcast today is going to be about three things. You'll have noticed the last couple of days, Zelensky in Florida trying his best to make sure that Trump doesn't simply side with Putin.

5:52David McWilliams: That's what they're trying to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're going to talk about what is happening between America and Europe. Obviously, Ukraine is the focus. But the big picture is the Americans are not gradually, but rapidly leaving Europe. Yeah, yeah. And of course, the question then for us as Irish people, given that we are the closest of all European countries to America, what does that mean for us strategically, financially, fiscally? And what does it mean for our industrial base? Because our industrial base has, as we've argued many, many times, simply been outsourced to the United States.

6:32David McWilliams: Now, if the United States is geopolitically leaving Europe, where does that leave corporate America? Does corporate America follow America? Yeah. And interestingly... They're forced to, aren't they? I was talking to somebody who's very, very well sourced in the Irish construction industry the other day. And he was telling me that there is very little, almost zero American now investment in real things. So building pharmaceutical factories. building chemical factories, building labs, all that. He said, it's all stopped. And they know because they're big suppliers. He says, it's all stopped. And he said, just watch this space.

7:12David McWilliams: That no matter whether the IDAs say, oh, we've got an X amount of new industries coming in, he's saying actually on a physical basis, they're not building anything. But if they've stopped here, they stopped across Europe? No, he said basically three countries are doing extremely well in Europe. Poland, Spain, Portugal. That's where you're seeing massive investments in industrial construction. So people building factories, building plants, building power plants, building data centres, building all these things. Yeah, and are the Spanish, Portuguese and Polish governments, is this a strategic policy?

7:49Are they, is there tax breaks? Is there... Very few tax breaks.

7:53David McWilliams: And actually, that's one of the interesting things in Ireland, is that we've got to a situation now in Ireland where no political party... in Ireland, think about it, is agitating for lower tax. Every single political party here is agitating for bigger state spending, for more social welfare, for higher taxation. Yeah. And yet Ireland's entire industrial strategy has been based on lower tax. So you've got this strange situation where corporations are paying very low tax here. Yeah, yeah. But individuals are paying incredibly high tax and incredibly high VAT and indirect tax. So if there's kind of a high tax society, which in a way is going to be, I think, over the next couple of years, are undoing if you have societies that are so heavily taxed at a time when your industrial base shifts.

8:49David McWilliams: We'll talk about that. But is that not a way of, because inflation is still pretty high, is the higher tax not a way of kind of cooling that a little bit? I wish, John, that there was such economic alacrity at the top that you've just displayed alacrity. I think what we have here is a legalistic, it's back to this idea, framework of doing business in Ireland, where the sort of the intersections of the law and the administration and academia, which kind of runs this place, right, is very much wedded to rules, to undermining, I think, the creative spirit of the nation. it's very very against the kind of suck it and see idea that basically all business is trial and error right we've always spoke about this shunterian idea right yeah you try it it works if it doesn't work so so a society that actually biases itself to encourage that sort of entrepreneurial thinking that creativity that risk-taking that sort of society by very definition is a society that churns and the society that actually grows yeah i think in ireland what we have had years ago i wrote this book called the renaissance nation and i call it the contented class so the class that has done very well in the last 30 years becomes contented yeah and that class then once you get to a level of income or wealth or status in our society the natural proclivity of that class in has been to slow things down to tie things up in legalistic knots to assume rules to kind of finger point at other people and in a sense to be sitting quite smugly at the top of the table.

10:39David McWilliams: And that class tends to be far too deferential to academic training. It's the kind of the leaving certization of the class, you know? How many points did you get in your leaving cert, right? Now think about the sort of people who value that at the age of 18 and who support that and who tend typically to genuflect to academic titles. Well, it's just playing the game, though, isn't it? The doctor, the professor, you know, the judge, all these sort of, what I would call this sort of contented class seemed to me in the last couple of years to have become the dominant class. And one thing that defines those people is they defer decision-making to rules.

11:25David McWilliams: So basically there's a rule for everything. And as long as you're compliant with those rules, everything's fine. But the dilemma for Ireland is that nobody's making decisions at the very highest level. Absolutely, yeah. So rather than say, this is the way we're going, you know, if, for example, it's a low-tax system, let's say, for example, we're doing this, we're going to get out of each other's way, we're going to get out of everyone's way, and we're going to try and make things happen. and we're going to defer to the population to make decisions. So to create that sort of entrepreneurial excitement, right, which is actually the elixir of life.

12:02David McWilliams: Rather than do that, what we've done is we've defaulted, I think, in the last 10 years, certainly since the crash, to a very legalistic, very administrative framework. And what defines the administration in Ireland, as we know, is not making decisions, which is why we don't have a metro, which is why we don't have another ring road if that's the issue which is why we'd never like the idea I had was move the port like a big big idea the port is obvious for any urban planner is a great port in the wrong place right so move it and liberate all that land do these big things and then get out of people's way and let people do do their thing take risks make money lose money create new things don't create new things, but re-inject sort of excitement into the society.

12:54But it has always struck me when you talk about making decisions. I agree with you. It seems to be a lack of decision making, which in essence is a lack of leadership. Yeah. But, you know, there seems to be a fear of making a decision, that fear of getting it wrong. From a political perspective, that if they make a wrong decision, they're voted out on the next election. you know which seems to be about politicians keeping a job rather than actually doing your job yeah i mean there's there's an argument to say most politics you should you have two term politicians yeah but just two terms that's it yeah then you're gone you know because you become a bed blocker yes right in effect but i think that what we're going to talk about this podcast is like let's look at what's happening in the world or maybe we'll just look at ireland for example today and then we'll think about the word maybe in the next podcast for tuesday but if you look

13:50David McWilliams: at forecasting right the fine art of forecasting was summed up by donald rumsfeld i think one of the greatest speeches very very underrated perplexed lots and lots of journalists at the time it was ahead of the iraq war it was the very famous known unknowns unknown knowns i have it Let's have a quick listen. Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me because, as we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns.

14:33The ones we don't know we don't know. There you go. You see, Mr. Neocon himself. Actually, the next podcast is going to be about what happened to the neocons, right? The relationship with Europe and America and all that kind of stuff. Because Rumsfeld was probably the last of the American patriotic neocons, right? The idea that America is the global policeman, the polar opposite to MAGA. The kind of waspy manifest destiny that the Americans had. They've now abandoned that script. We'll talk about that in the next podcast. The reason it's important for Ireland is Ireland is so close to America

15:09David McWilliams: that if the Americans have ripped up the script that it becomes the global policeman and the most obvious outward manifestation of that is turning their back on Europe, then what happens here means that the decision-making here, which we could outsource to the Yanks when they were here, if they're no longer here, we've got to get back to making our own decisions. Yeah. And that comes back to what we're talking about. Sorry, are you saying we outsource our decision-making? Yes, I believe that what happened in Ireland over the last 10 years or 15 years since the crash has been a lazy outsourcing of economic decisions to American multinationals.

15:52Just to appease them.

15:53David McWilliams: Not to appease them, but it was the consequence of the American multinationals generating so much tax revenue here that nothing so focuses the mind like a tight budget as a general rule. If you have no budget constraint, you kind of do anything. And if you have no budget constraint, you don't make decisions because you know the money's coming in anyway. So I think it's all of a piece that I'm worried that this country has now run out of road. And the contented class who have done extremely well over the last, let's say, two decades are now sitting on the top. And rather than entertain change and give coming generations the opportunity.

16:33Yeah.

16:34David McWilliams: They're actually stifling everything. And they're stifling everything in a legalistic, administrative frame of mind. I know from, you know, teaching in universities and listening to the way in which universities run and all that sort of stuff, that what there is is a dead hand of the administration in this country. And as long as the Americans were generating loads of cash and loads of tax revenue, we could brag about we're the best at this and the fastest at this, blah, blah, blah. But it's all based on one trick. And that trick, ironically, was low taxes. The contented class that have got rich on the back of that.

17:12David McWilliams: So you think, for example, you know, so many of the, for example, consultancies, the big four, the legal firms, all this, the law itself, the administrative itself. These are all resting on top of the spigot that is the American multinational money. Yeah. All those go, but they don't realise it because they're in the fancy restaurants, the fancy cars and the houses in posh parts of Dublin, all that sort of stuff. But my sense is that that cosy consensus is leading the economy and the society into a cul-de-sac. And that cul-de-sac will be made tighter if the Americans not pull out, because they won't pull out overnight.

17:57David McWilliams: But if they begin to make those 50-50 decisions are no longer dropping in Ireland's favour. So I think that's something to be really aware of when you're looking at it. To get back to Rumsfeld, right? The known unknowns. What he said, like, if you're forecasting the future, John, that's what we're trying to do today. The known unknowns are like, means there's things we know, right? So in forecasting, that's like, we know how the economy works. Therefore, let's talk about that as a central case. And then there are the known unknowns. And these are risks that we don't yet appreciate, but we can kind of predict with a certain amount of accuracy because we've seen them before.

18:36There's something going on, but we're not quite sure what.

18:38David McWilliams: But we've seen before, right? And then, of course, there are the unknown unknowns. And these are risks that are so novel and unexpected that we have no idea, A, where they're going to come from, but B, how they're going to affect us. But we do know, a bit like our friend Nassim Talib's, idea of the black swan, that a black swan event is an event with very low probability, but unbelievably profound consequences. And that's what makes it so dramatic. So for example, a pandemic, right? The probability of that before COVID was very, very low, but the consequence was enormous. And we're still feeling it.

19:18David McWilliams: Or for example, you could say a massive crash in stock markets. You could say the probability was low at the beginning and then the consequence was profound. So what Rumsfeld is saying is that if you're in the business of talking about the future, which in effect is what economists should be doing most of the time, there's things you know, that's your central case. There's known unknowns, there's risks that you can quantify. That is your risk case. And then there is this black swan, which is things you can't quantify. And of course, what Taleb always says, and this goes back to Ireland, is in order for a country or an individual or an institution to be really what he called anti-fragile, the opposite of fragile, it's not that you survive unknown unknowns, but you actually thrive in them.

20:17David McWilliams: so the more chaotic unpredictable the world the more you actually thrive in that that's if you're an opportunity to be able to recognize the opportunity itself yeah and again so it behoves individuals if you think about the way in which we live right most of us live what i would call in the world of insurance so what we've been doing in the last hundred years as as humans i think is we've been trying to build insurance policies against risk. So I want a paying job, I want a pension, I want a permanent this. Basically, I want to take out the risk in my life. And I want to, in effect, pay somebody to de-risk my life.

20:58David McWilliams: That's what a lot of humans have chosen to do, which is incredibly novel in human experience. Because the whole history of humanity has been the history of risk, right? And in the last, let's say, 50 years, we've de-risked everything. We've tried to de-risk everything. So people would say, get a good job. Like your auntie said, get a job in the guards. That's right. Right? Okay. Getting a job in the guards was basically, you're going to take risks out of your life. So you're going to live in the world of known knowns. Yeah. Right? Yeah, but sorry, just to stop you there, isn't the aim of life as an individual to, you know, be the best you can at all the rest, but ultimately it's about contentment you went on about the contented class but contentment as in content with your lot yeah that you get to a point where yeah things are kind of they're humming along now and that's grand and blah blah blah isn't that the aim of life well i think for most people i think the dilemma in life is that you never really hum along no no there's never really in equilibrium you're never i've never hummed along exactly but you're never really at rest or my sense is that because the economy because we've chosen maybe we haven't chosen this is another philosophical discussion john chris on new year's day it's called it's called a hangover by the way dear listener right uh but the issue here right is it is yeah too hungover yeah there's another point there arthur really too hungover i'm talking about philosophy right no but because we live in a globalized world, because we've elected to live in this bizarre, hyper-capitalist world that we live in, where everybody and everything seems to be in competition with each other every day, all the time.

22:56Therefore, the economy and the society that lives in that world

23:00David McWilliams: needs to make a few choices. And one of those choices is you can't forever insulate yourself from the risks. Yeah. Because again, the more you insulate yourself from the risk, the less return you're going to get. Yeah. Because risk and return are inversely correlated. And as a result of that, countries like Ireland that are now run by a contented class also run the extreme high risk that that class suffocates the creativity that is necessary to make the thing, go back to your word, hum along. Yeah. Because the engine's only humming if it's actually working. Yeah. And I worry about the future. If you look at the central case in Ireland, if you look at the housing market, if you look at the way in which we are not creating new companies, if you look at the way in which we're spending the American multinational money, all of these issues suggest that the central case in Ireland is more of the same.

24:06David McWilliams: And what the same is, is a genuflection to the administration. As they were saying, administratia, right? And the administratia involves the legal system. It involves the academic system. It also involves the media. And it involves a slight kind of an oligarchy that runs the place at the top, which is consistently, in my opinion, obsessed by respectability. So what Nassim Taleb, just to understand this, what Nassim Taleb is saying there then, that this contentment, this humming along, where people are content with their lot and everything's working for them, but also they can get a little bit complacent and therefore a Black Swan event is even more devastating.

24:58Yeah, absolutely. That's exactly what he's saying. He's saying that one of, and again, if you haven't read Taleb this year, dear listener, go and seek out the Black Swan, fooled by randomness, skin in the game, anti-fragile.

25:18David McWilliams: There are four books that Taleb has written over the last 20 years. They're all exceptional in terms of the way he looks at the world. And his basic idea is precisely that, that the natural proclivity towards complacency means that as a general rule, we are very, very fragile. So we believe that our world is becoming more secure because we're surrounding ourselves with less and less risk. but that very security he says undermines our ability to a be resilient number one yeah but also that the key to living in this strange bizarre world of ours is to be anti-fragile to be the opposite of fragile and in order to do that you have to in effect live on your wits and i think you're absolutely right when you say well that's a kind of chaotic permanent state of neurosis.

26:19David McWilliams: And that would give your, that would wreck your head. Yeah. It would melt your head all the time, right? It's a permanent state of anxiety. John's head is melted all right. Right, right, right. I don't even know what day it is today. But, but if you're looking at the future, you need to factor in not just what might happen, but how we react to these things. So if you look at our country. What I fear, and of course this has been evidenced in, you know, people protesting, judicial reviews and all that sort of stuff, but that's just the thin end of the wedge. What I think is happening is that there is a, the way, remember, a couple of weeks ago we talked about the cavemen.

27:08David McWilliams: The citizens against absolutely everything. This is the contented class in action. So that's one side of the coin. And then you mentioned the politicians and no decisions, right? There's a thing in America called NIM2, which is not in my term of office. All right. Right? I've heard that one. Yeah. So you take cave, citizens against absolutely everything, cavemen, and NIM2, not in my term of office. So a politician will think, okay, how do I stay in power? I stay in power, but it's not in power. The interesting thing is it's actually you're just in a job. Because power is where you exercise decision-making, which Napoleon said to govern is to choose.

27:52You've got to make choose. That's real power. But if you're decided, if you're in the administratia and your objective is the bureaucratic outcome of staying in your job,

28:02David McWilliams: then NIM2 begins to define your political career. So no decisions are made because you say, well, not in my term of office. Yeah. Right? We'll build that road, but not in my term of office. We'll build that metro, but not in my term of office. Yeah. Right? Yeah, I like the idea, but not now. I mean, that's what I was saying about, you know, it's politicians are more about keeping their job than doing their job. Yeah, exactly. And of course, you're absolutely, so NIM2 leads to a situation where all decisions are postponed, John, are kicked into the next term of office, right? Yeah. And the next term is like this bureaucratic nirvana because it means that you don't have to do anything and that is what is happening in Ireland that's actually how the society now runs now the problem is that if nobody's making decisions nothing's getting done yeah and I suspect that the guy I was talking to from the construction side of things his problem is that if you're in business it's all about making decisions every day yeah and if you're self-employed like we are it's all about okay what do we do today what am I going to do I'm going to do this I'm going to write this I'm going to do a podcast or you're making decisions that are material for you and for other people all the time yeah but if you're in the bureaucracy you come with a totally different set of reward systems and the reward system is not in my term of office yeah what am I not going to do today Yeah, exactly.

29:33What am I not going to do? Why? Because doing things runs the risk of being wrong.

29:39David McWilliams: And being wrong is the worst thing you can be in administration. I remember years ago working in the administratia. And the worst thing I could ever said to you in the Irish Central Bank as a young economist, when you came up with an idea, was, I think that might be unwise. now if you got fucking unwise written on the margin of any proposal you were doomed yeah because then to be unwise it covers a multitude of sins right but in effect you're slightly live wire yeah and you're not really part of the gang yeah and remember I told you that the governor once said to me whatever you do remember number one rule Mr.

30:23David McWilliams: Mark Williams when I was about 25 don't frighten the heart Horses. Think about that. Think about that mentality, right? That we, the society, are the horses. Egypt's running around the place. And the job of the administratia is don't frighten the horses. So how you don't frighten the horses is you don't do anything. And because the American multinationals came in based on low tax and generated all this fiscal bonanza for us, We've been able to obscure the fact that the society and the administratia has ground to a halt. Not because there's something endemically wrong with it, but because the incentive structure that the contented class have erected around themselves is, I'm all right, Jack.

31:14Yeah.

31:15David McWilliams: So no change. and in a world where things are changing by the day, by the hour, by the minute, a society and economy governed by I'm all right, Jack, runs the risk of a cataclysmic failure because not only are we unprepared, but because we've been surrounding ourselves with de-risking ourselves for years, we don't even recognize. Okay, so looking through the Donald Rumsfeld lens, very quickly, what are the known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns for Ireland? But before you answer that, let's do a bit of this. Okay.

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33:33So, Mac, we're covering. Be very philosophical. Very philosophical. Two more pints, please. either. But talk to me then about the Donald Rumsfeld view of the known knowns, the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns for Ireland. What does that mean for the next year? So first

33:57David McWilliams: of all, the known knowns is the central case, the forecast. So what is 2026 likely to, what do we know we know yeah so we know for example the housing crisis will continue big thing yeah why because we know that the construction industry at present levels of administrative interference can only build around 40 to 45 000 homes we know that the combination of the natural increase in the population, plus the obsolescence of old buildings that can't be used anymore because they're actually falling down, dereliction. Yeah, yeah. And family size, which is falling, which means there are less people in every house, which means you need to have more houses.

34:51Yeah. Remember I said when we were kids, most families have seven or eight people in the house. Yeah. Right? Now it's one or two. Yeah. So it means you need four times more houses and homes, right?

35:00David McWilliams: And of course, immigration. is running at very high levels. So we are the back of an envelope. So we've estimated here in the podcast we need to build about 70 ,000 houses a year just to stand still. We're building 40 ,000. Upshot is rents continue to go up. Yeah. People continue to live with their parents, younger people. Yeah. House prices continue to rise. And why is this? Because the administration has got in the way of the construction industry. We know that, and I know it's not something that we should celebrate, but we know that in 2006, the top of the Catholic tiger, this country built close to 90 ,000 homes.

35:46Now they're in the wrong place, the ghost estates and everything, but it can be done. Well, I wonder is, based on what your mate in the construction industry was saying, if there is a fall off in new construction in the pharmaceutical side and building factories and labs and all that kind of stuff, that there are more workers, more builders available to increase. No, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, you say, look, there's X amount of workers, X amount of machinery, and if you're divvying all that up and you're building lots of new fabs and new factories, then, of course, you don't have the workers to build homes.

36:24So you're absolutely right. The dilemma with that is that the minute we start building something like the MetroLink. Oh yeah, that'll swallow them all up. That'll swallow them all up. So again, you've got all this, you know, it's interesting you think that if you have a capacity problem, so the dilemma for Ireland is that

36:39David McWilliams: we are operating the economy at full capacity, right? There is no capacity anywhere else. Unemployment is as low as it's ever been. The greatest way to observe capacity constraints is traffic. I think it's the greatest obvious example of an economy which is straining at the leash. and we know that's getting disastrous, right? And why is it? Because it's just simply too many cars for the infrastructure, right? Yeah. So that's the first thing. So the no-no, number one, housing continues to be exorbitantly priced for younger people. Yeah. Now who gets rich on that? The contented class. Because the contented class own their own homes.

37:18David McWilliams: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? You see what's happening. You can see who's winning and who's losing. That's the first thing. Second thing that means, another thing we know to be the case then, emigration of young Irish will continue apace because in the main they are leaving because they can't get the lifestyle that they want which is commensurate with their income and a huge chunk of that is housing because they want to grow up, they want to be you know, like Cal said to me in New York, Dad I can pay my rent I can pay my rent in my own flat with my mates. This is not possible in Ireland. So he's in New York with loads of his mates.

38:02David McWilliams: Lots of people who listen to the show will be listening in Canada, in Australia, in the UK, in America, as we speak. So we know that that will continue. And the third known is that as long as the multinational money is there, we have this, what we spoke about the last few weeks, the Dutch disease idea. That the spigot that is throwing off this money, American multinationals, is biasing the contented class to genuflect consistently to that area and ignore everything else. And then, of course, the major risk is that they begin to reduce their presence in Ireland. Now, if they do that, that's a known unknown, John.

38:51David McWilliams: Because the unknown bit is we don't know what they will do. But we know what that looks like. That looks like austerity. So if they were to leave and the fiscal bonanza were to not disappear, but change dramatically. So the 28 billion extra corporation tax that we took in that we didn't expect, let's say that were to fall to 20 billion. That's 8 billion. That's a lot of bread. Now, if that were to disappear because corporate America follows political America out of Europe or is beginning to invest in other parts of Europe like Poland as we said or Spain what you would find then is we know what that looks like that's a known unknown it looks like austerity yeah now can Ireland do austerity we proved we could do it after the 2008 crash 2010 painful it's incredibly painful and we could only only do it because the imf told us to do it we didn't do it on our own yeah right so we know what that looks like and that i think is a significant risk that you will get a contented class of cavemen citizens against virtually everything yeah and a nimtu class of politicians not in my term of office faced with a challenge which means they have to actually make the books balance at a time when the revenue is falling because the Americans are not here in the same numbers.

40:23David McWilliams: I don't think this political class is capable of making those decisions. No. I really don't. Well, they haven't proved that to anybody. Yeah. And it's just, it's, you know, it's the usual thing of moving the furniture and the Titanic, you know. And you see, the last time, The interesting thing with the Troika is that our political class could blame the Troika. The Troika were a godsend. Yeah. If you actually think about it, for the dynamics of how politics work. Because they'd say, oh, Jesus, if it wasn't for the IMF, we wouldn't be doing it. Yeah. You know, it was a really good get out of jail card, right?

41:00For the political class that actually spent their time during the boom laughing at people like me who were saying, this thing could go pear-shaped. then when it did go pear-shaped the IMF came in the IMF gave them an insurance policy yes so those foreigners doing it to us do you remember all that sort of stuff yeah I do I do so I'd be worried about that I'd be worried about that

41:20David McWilliams: as you look to the future but I think we should end on an upbeat note John please it's almost time to go for a jar yeah Troy Parrott Troy Parrott right yes there was a run Christmas on Irish jerseys right You couldn't get them for love nor money because all the kids wanted Republic of Ireland football jerseys. And by the way, his Dutch jersey as well, his Dutch team. What are they? Alchemar. Alchemar. Okay. Yeah, there was a run on those too. So let's end with the Troy parrotisation of the Irish economy, which I love his quote today. His quote was, me ma had the rosary beads swallowed. Isn't that a great expression?

42:04It's such a Dublin way of speaking as well. Swallowed. We may have had the rosary beads swallied, but Troy Parrish, if we qualify for the World Cup,

42:14David McWilliams: there will be a spike in economic activity in June and carousing and acting the maggot and travelling and spending money we don't have. Yeah. Right? So the upbeat solution, right? And all the ICE agents in America would be rubbing their hands going, here we go. Deport the mix, okay? Right? The funniest thing is I was at US 94. I was at the last time. That's right, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When we played Holland and they beat, they, if anybody remembers Orlando, the baking heat and the Dutch just played us off the park. Yeah. But the pilgrimage was well worth it. The pilgrimage, I stayed in the days in, have you ever stayed in the days in, John?

42:53No, no, never. They are miles away from American cities on motorways, on freeways. So these are classic motels. Motels, but they're really like, You put the quarter in the bed and it vibrates. Unbelievable, right? It was like, I felt like Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas.

43:10David McWilliams: That's right. Okay. Chaos, mental. But if we qualify, I'm going. Actually, the podcast is going if we qualify. So if we qualify, we will get a mad kick to consumption in the same way as we will run out of jerseys. We ran out of jerseys at Christmas. We will have a massive little domestically generated economic mini boom in June. and the run-up to June. Yeah. And I think that's the optimistic note. But it is a known unknown, John. It surely is. Because we don't know what's going to happen, but if it does happen, we know what's going to happen. We'll talk to you Tuesday.

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