"David McWilliams the most influential economist in the UK and Ireland"

Should the award not be "Best Entertainer in Economics"? Or "Most Influential amongst people who don't understand what he's talking about"?
Like him or hate him he's a great communicator. He's excellent at explaining things to the lay man.
 
Yup, well worth the read. Given the reading list, I guess I won't be signing up for that course
 
I just can't help categorizing David McWilliams as a one trick pony. He appears to delight in taking an opposing view to most other economists and has rated himself far too highly on his "I told you so" mantra on the property tiger collapse. While his prediction was accurate it was initially given well in advance of the bubble economy and "even a stopped clock is right twice a day". we have plenty of good professional economists who provide in-depth analysis of their theories rather than sound bites. However Economics is boring stuff and therefore the presentation style of McWilliams would prove more influential than the more sedate and accurate style of the likes of Brian Lucey (With apologies to Brian for any inference of being boring )
 
How anyone can rate the bould McWilliams ahead of Tim Hartford in the FT is beyond me...
 
44brendan said:
However Economics is boring stuff and therefore the presentation style of McWilliams would prove more influential than the more sedate and accurate style of the likes of Brian Lucey (With apologies to Brian for any inference of being boring )
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Actually he will get on very well with Brian. David likes folk to think outside the box and there ain't been anything so quite outside the box as Professor Lucey's advice (on radio and in press) that Anglo should sell its €27bn of deposits for €20bn thus making a handsome profit of €47bn (I kid you not, what his colleague Karl Whelan dubbed a "deposit selling" moment, who can honestly say they haven't had one?).

Hey, that even beats David's advice that a major insurance company "would bite your hand off" to insure the Bank Guarantee

Boy we are going to get some outside the box champions coming from Trinity.
 
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Note that TCD have adopted the US approach of calling all lecturers "professors".

So in TCD you have:

assistant profs
associate profs
full profs

To be a real professor, you would need maybe 20 years of academic output.

In NUIG, UCC, etc., only the top academics are called professors, and you must be appointed to this role, based on outstanding academic output.

In reality, DMW is a "part-time lecturer", paid per hour or per module.
 
I see our new Guvnor is Professor Philip Lane. A safe and capable pair of hands. I presume Professor McWilliams was asking for too high a price for surely otherwise he was a shoe in.
 
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I suspect it is must easier to pontificate on economic policy in articles in the Indo than to implement economic policy in the Central Bank. We all saw how DMcW's policy advice to Brain Lenehan worked out in practice!!!!
 
In fairness to McWilliams, he aims to demystify economics and make it interesting for ordinary schlubs. Economics is common sense tarted up in jargon, the old joke about getting a one handed economist springs to mind.
 
KlausFlouride said:
In fairness to McWilliams, he aims to demystify economics and make it interesting for ordinary schlubs. Economics is common sense tarted up in jargon, the old joke about getting a one handed economist springs to mind.
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I agree that Prof McW's ideas cut to the chase and have an obvious appeal for schlubs. Just a few examples:

1. Confiscate 10% of Multi Nationals' assets (70bn)
2. Exit the Euro
3. Forgive all mortgages
4. Give a blanket guarantee for all bank liabilities
5. Insure this guarantee with a leading international insurer

etc. etc.

(4) was the only one of these brilliant ideas that was actually taken up.
 
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