We're in Bilbao this week, and it’s got us thinking. How does a football club that refuses to sign non-Basque players manage to qualify for the Champions League, raking in close to €100 million from TV rights, match days, and UEFA money, while Dublin’s best bet is a few fivers from the Conference League? The answer is in economics. The Basques were Europe’s forgotten industrialists, the only region in Spain to undergo a full-blown Industrial Revolution, powered by local iron ore, steel production, and a shipbuilding boom that made Bilbao Spain’s biggest port by 1900. Then they lost it all. Globalisation, China, and the EU opened the floodgates. Unlike post-industrial towns in the UK or Ireland, Bilbao didn’t roll over. They moved the port. They built the Guggenheim. They chose ambition. And they proved that even a small, isolated, ancient people, who speak a pre-Ice Age language with no known relatives, can build a modern economy with global reach. What’s our excuse? Join the gang! https://plus.acast.com/s/the-david-mcwilliams-podcast.
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31:37
The Moody Blues: No More Finance Bros in LA
This week, we’re keeping one eye on Wall Street and the other on a canal in Dublin. Moody’s just downgraded the United States' credit rating, a move that quietly confirms what most won’t say out loud: America’s debt-fuelled growth is unsustainable, and interest payments are now outpacing military spending. Meanwhile, back home, a row of cottages literally collapsed, not abandoned, but owned by the very people lobbying to fix Ireland’s housing crisis. In a country where average rents just passed €2,000. In this episode, we tie it all together: the real consequences of debt, the performative hypocrisy at the top, and how property in Ireland has become a parasitic asset, not a social good. From Donald Trump’s inflationary tariff plans to the Irish State’s inability to enforce basic upkeep, we’re watching the scaffolding of credibility, financial and moral, fall away. Join the gang! https://plus.acast.com/s/the-david-mcwilliams-podcast.
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32:40
The Battle for Africa with Pumi Mashigo
From wine valleys to White House stand-offs, we’re in South Africa as the continent’s biggest economy finds itself caught between China, Russia, and a sulking Uncle Sam. Reporting from Franschhoek, we trace the Huguenot legacy, the Dutch East India Company, and how South Africa became the West’s favourite refuelling stop, until now. With President “Cupcake” Ramaphosa headed to the White House this week, US aid frozen, and Afrikaner “refugees” granted asylum, tensions are flaring. South African podcaster Pumi Mashigo joins us to unpack the realignment: BRICS, Palestine, misinformation campaigns, and why the Global South is finally saying: enough. Join the gang! https://plus.acast.com/s/the-david-mcwilliams-podcast.
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42:43
Trump’s New Enemies: Billionaires, Big Pharma & Bibi?
Trump is stealing Bernie’s manifesto. In this episode, we dive into why Trump is suddenly talking about taxing the rich and slashing the cost of prescription drugs, policies lifted straight from the progressive left. Is he turning on the billionaire donors funding his campaign? And is Israel, long a pet cause of those donors, being quietly edged out of Trump’s new MAGA calculus? We unpack a flurry of recent deals, from a largely meaningless UK–US trade agreement , to an urgent truce with China after Chinese exports to the US through the Port of LA fell by 50%. Behind the white smoke: a looming summer of empty shelves, rising inflation, and a reminder that America’s economic dominance isn’t what it used to be. Meanwhile, Ireland exports more to the US than the UK does, despite being 12 times smaller, but could soon find itself caught in the crossfire if the US starts attaching China-related conditions to EU trade. Join the gang! https://plus.acast.com/s/the-david-mcwilliams-podcast.
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31:29
A Letter from Africa with Simon Kuper
This week I'm in South Africa on a book and speaking tour and am chatting at the Franschoek Literary Festival, so we are all South Africa today. A country of contradictions, rich in resources, vibrant in culture, yet S.A. is held back by inequality, corruption, and the long shadow of apartheid. In this episode, we explore its uneasy present and remarkable past: from Mandela’s legacy to Elon Musk’s childhood, from empire and race to why Donald Trump has fixated on white Afrikaners. We travel through Cape Town and Johannesburg, unpacking it all with FT journalist Simon Kuper, and along the way, we encounter pencil tests, Springboks, slabs of the Berlin Wall, and the political ghosts of the Cold War. Is South Africa being used, once again, as a pawn in someone else’s game? Join the gang! https://plus.acast.com/s/the-david-mcwilliams-podcast.
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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 important to all of us and yet, it’s made inaccessible and complicated by so many.I’ve always thought what is complicated is rarely important and what is important is rarely complicated.That will be our motto.Every week we are going to tease out some big economic or political issue facing us, not just here in Ireland but in Europe and further afield. Globalisation has brought us all together. We all face similar challenges whether you live in Dublin, London, Minnesota or Milan.If you would like to enjoy all of our content ad-free and have early access to episodes, subscribe to DMCW+ on Apple Podcast.If you would like to support the show, please consider becoming a patron at www.patreon.com/DavidMcWilliams.
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Australia