Mr. David McWilliams:

No. I became increasingly certain because the evidence was all over the place, from the hard economic numbers to the anecdotal evidence and conversations. When you see house prices going completely out of kilter, you realise there is a serious problem. One of my best leading indicators was a piece in the Irish Times called Take Five, a part of its property section which offers city by city house price comparisons. The article showed readers the difference between a two-up two-down house in Dublin city for €500,000 and a 17 bedroom chateau outside Paris with a direct RER rail link to Place de l'Opéra, for the same price. As the property-credit-borrowing binge became worse, it struck me that there was no way we could avoid a banking crisis. It became a matter of when, not if.