Mr. David McWilliams:

This is all about 2006. During 2007 and 2008 I became very worried. My articles became extremely agitated. I could see the smart money leaving the country. One could see this in repo rates and credit default swops. In The Pope's Children and in the accompanying TV series, I said that certain well known Dublin banks were then little more than out of control hedge funds, leveraging themselves and their clients' money into property. I said that these outfits usually went belly-up. I worried, but not because I had any contact with the banks. I was so toxic at that stage that I had never been in any of the banks. I may have bumped into one or two of them at economic conferences but that was the height of my contact. I had no insider knowledge or data. This was simply an economist working in the banking system, on his own and at his own desk, who could see what was going on.