The David McWilliams Podcast

By David McWilliams & John Davis

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The David McWilliams Podcast episodes

November 05 The AI Reckoning: When a Trillion-Dollar Bet Meets Rising Rates
The AI story has flipped from a technology story to a credit story, and that changes everything. Anthropic’s bonds have been downgraded to junk, Elon Musk says credit markets are closing to anything with “AI” attached, and half a trillion dollars was wiped off Alphabet in a single day. We dig into the uncomfortable data: outside the Magnificent Seven, AI has delivered almost zero productivity payoff to corporate America, revenue per worker is flat across the other 493 S&P companies. Then the real danger: if inflation forces the Fed to push rates from 4% to 6.5% to crush it, an overvalued AI market smashes straight into rising rates driven by a war in Iran. Plus why Christine Lagarde’s early exit from the ECB might have one eye on the French presidency.
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36 min
November 03 Bibi or Tibi? Israel’s Deadlock and the Midterms the Ayatollah Could Decide
In Israel, Netanyahu has lost ground but still frames every choice as “Bibi or Tibi,” and liberal Israel faces a once-in-a-generation chance to oust him, if it can stomach governing with the Arab parties who took 18% of the Knesset. We talk to Daphna Maor of The Marker (Haaretz) from Tel Aviv, put the odds at 50-50, and ask whether the Arab bloc could become Israel’s Parnell holding the balance of power. Then the US midterms, voting tonight. Inflation, mortgage rates at 7%, flatlining house prices and a K-shaped economy have Trump on the ropes, while the top 1% have gained wealth and immigration has vanished as a worry. The twist: if Trump loses the House and Senate, foreign affairs is all he’s got left, which could make him more dangerous, not less. Plus Serbia’s students topple Vučić and Bolsonaro flees to the US.
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37 min
October 29 The Five Scariest Numbers in the Global Economy (A Halloween Special)
For Halloween, we start with Ireland’s first witch trial: Alice Kyteler, the Kilkenny moneylender who buried four husbands and skipped town, leaving her servant to burn at the stake in 1324. For a real scare, we dive into the five numbers that should keep you up at night. The Shiller index at 41 (last seen in 1999, just before the dot-com crash), global government debt at 94% of GDP, The US paying $1 trillion a year just to service its debt, more than its defence budget, the 10-year Treasury yield at 5.36%, a 24-year high and oil at $110, 80% up on last year, thanks to the Strait of Hormuz. If it all goes pear-shaped, the question is simple: who’s the witch?

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36 min
October 27 Is France the Canary? The End of the Centre and Europe’s Generational Revolt
A week of rioting in France, but we argue it’s no blip. Marine Le Pen is polling around 35%, with the next candidate on just 14%, and she could become the first ever to win outright in the first round. French public spending is 57% of GDP (31% in Ireland, and above anything the Soviet Union managed), over-65s have gone from 12% of the population in 1968 to 25% today, and bond yields have jumped from 3.4% to 4.8%. We unpack the poly-crisis behind it: the 68ers versus their grandchildren, diesel prices and the ghost of the Gilets Jaunes, a left captured by the educated elite, AI anxiety, and half of French schools missing a teacher. Plus 68% of French voters say democracy isn’t delivering, Meloni getting outflanked on her right, and whether the European project survives the generation that built it.
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44 min
October 22 The World’s First AI Minister: Can Democracies Make Haste Slowly? with Evan Solomon
Canada has appointed the world’s first minister for AI, and Evan Solomon joins us to explain why. Canada invented modern AI through Hinton, Bengio and Sutton, then watched big tech harvest it. Now Ottawa is subsidising up to 80% of compute for home-grown firms and has put €150 million behind Bengio’s “safe by design” AI. How do slow, deliberate democracies regulate a technology teaching itself at lightning speed? Plus Carney’s coalition of middle powers, why Trump is the best thing to happen to Canadian nationalism, and “ancestral intelligence.”
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45 min
October 20 Peak Humans: Modernity Vs. Tradition
Broadcasting from the Aran Islands, where the population has crashed from 48,000 to 3,000, we look at what may be the biggest data point of 2026: for the first time ever, the human race is shrinking. The global fertility rate has dropped to 1.8, below the 2.1 needed to replace ourselves, and of 236 countries studied, 219 are in decline. The twist is that it’s happening fastest among poorer, less-educated women in poorer countries, which wrecks the old rule that you have to get rich before you get old. So is modernity itself the culprit, and could tradition stage a comeback? Plus, why AI scepticism sent investors rushing back into bonds this week.
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42 min
October 15 A View From NYC: The Diaspora and the Midterms
Live from New York, with a radical idea: treat the Irish diaspora as our greatest soft power asset. Every Irish child costs the state about €500,000 to educate, and America pockets the return when they emigrate. So scrap tax for two years for anyone coming home, and give citizenship to a third generation of Irish Americans. Then the midterms, four weeks out. Trump is on 33%, the lowest of any midterm president since 1974, petrol is back above $4, and markets give Democrats a 65% shot at both chambers. A blue wave makes him a lame duck.
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40 min
October 13 The Tiramisu Budget: Is Ireland West European or West African?
Ireland’s budget surplus is €9 billion, but the Department of Finance reckons €23 billion of the €34 billion in corporation tax is transient AI-boom money. Strip it out and we’re looking at a €13-14 billion deficit, heading for €20 billion by 2029. Meanwhile we’ve just pumped €7.4 billion of tax cuts and handouts into an economy already at full employment. Recorded live from New York, where financiers are getting twitchy about an AI bubble: US long-term rates are creeping towards 6%, and superscalers now gobble up 17% of the capital the Treasury needs. We ask whether Ireland is Norway or Nigeria when it comes to managing a windfall, why a hard budget focuses the mind, and why a rotating Taoiseach and a split Department of Finance add up to ordering two tiramisus because the voucher is free.
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44 min
October 08 Mr 5%: The Armenian Who Invented the Oil Industry and Gave It All Away
Calouste Gulbenkian never drilled a well, never owned a rig, and still died the richest man in the world. We follow the Armenian fixer from Constantinople who took 5% of everything: the Turkish Petroleum Company, Royal Dutch Shell, even a deal with Stalin paid in Hermitage art. His maps shaped modern Iraq and left the Kurds sitting on top of the oil, and his split of upstream, refining and distribution still defines Big Oil today. Plus why diesel is spiking, what a 100 million barrel release really does, and why this misanthropic networker gave his fortune to art while today's billionaires build spaceships.
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44 min
October 06 The End of The Housing Crisis?
Dublin prices have fallen 5.2% last year, the biggest drop since 2014, and the buyer's strike is real. The premium over asking has shrunk from 7% to 2.6%, and the average couple on €108k can borrow just enough for a €484k home when a three-bed semi in Dublin asks €635k. We break down why: young people are maxed out, we're still building 1980s houses for a 2020s population, and the force driving prices this time is people, not credit like in 2008. Plus the Spanish eviction story that had Madrid in uproar, and why "the cure for high prices is high prices."
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34 min

About The David McWilliams Podcast

From the publisher's feed

The aim of this weekly podcast is to make economics easy, uncomplicated and accessible. With the world at a political, technological and financial tipping point, economics has never been so…