The David McWilliams Podcast

Recorded live at Kilkenomics, we’re joined by the FT’s John Burn-Murdoch, the most interesting data journalist writing today. Wealth inequality’s share may not have budged in 40 years, but incomes haven’t kept pace with wealth, so working your way from the middle to the top has gone from hard to basically impossible. That’s why young people are piling into crypto, gambling and t...

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 zer...

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 hol...

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 yi...