Once, economists shuffled along university corridors, unknown even to their students. Now we hang on their every word
THERE WAS A time when the only bonds most of us were familiar with were called either Prize or James and the only European markets we cared about were the higgledy-piggledy ones we found in cute seaside resort towns while we were on our summer holidays.
Everything’s changed, and, thanks to the near-total collapse of our banking sector, the loss of our economic sovereignty to the troika and the apparently never-ending (and never-succeeding) attempts by politicians across the EU to avert financial catastrophe, we are all armchair economists.
One of the most peculiar manifestations of the new world order is that our real economists, who, in the past, were barely recognised by their students in the corridors of the universities where they spent their days, never mind by the general public, are now household names. Some of them are even stars.
Morgan Kelly, David McWilliams, Brian Lucey and Constantin Gurdgiev have become media darlings, wise soothsayers and handy rent-a-quotes for the times we live in.
If Georgia Salpa and Rosanna Davison have Buck's Townhouse and Krystle as their night-time haunts, our supereconomists have irisheconomy.ie, Tonight with Vincent Browne, Twitter and, sometimes, Doheny and Nesbitt as their – admittedly less glitzy – nocturnal playgrounds.
The biggest and brightest supereconomist is, of course, McWilliams. He had become a star long before the economic collapse and was to the fore in popularising the dismal science and the dangers of screwing it up.
He was among the first to warn about the dangers of the property bubble and the madness of the bank guarantees, and has been almost ever-present on our airwaves over the past three years. He loves the limelight. And it loves him.
Kelly is a different and entirely more terrifying kettle of hard-core economic data. He eschews the glare of the media spotlight and is content to write the occasional apocalyptic piece for this newspaper; the piece is then picked up by television and radio commentators and politicians, and quickly moves from being one man’s (albeit well-informed) opinion to gospel.
Gurdgiev, meanwhile, is so frequently to be found scaring us on Tonight with Vincent Brownethat it's a wonder he doesn't move into TV3's Ballymount studios.
Lucey is also a much called-upon talking head, and when he’s not doing that, he’s writing tweets of doom. He has an uncanny ability to make the most dire predictions in 140 characters or less.
Economics may not be the new rock’n’roll, but it is edging into that space, and nowhere is this more evident than at Electric Picnic, the eclectic boutique festival that takes place in Co Laois every September.
For the past three years, McWilliams has been a star at the event, pressing the flesh backstage and hosting incredibly angry events under canvas in the Mindfield talking-shop area. Although some people might say he has a single transferable speech, few seem to mind, and he always plays to a full house as crowds gather to hear him eviscerate governments and bankers.
The unlikely popularity of economics at the Picnic prompted McWilliams and a couple of others to set up an economics festival that takes place in Kilkenny this weekend. Kilkenomics is sponsored by a drinks company and, in addition to the supereconomists, it stars many of the country’s best-known comics.
On Thursday afternoon, on a small stage in Langton’s Hotel, the comedian David O’Doherty was playing MC in front of about 200 Leaving Cert students who had showed up, while on their mid-term break, to listen to economists talk.
The coauthor of Economics for Dummies, Peter Antonioni, wearing a suspiciously hipsteresque hat, was there too, as was a former economy minister from Argentina. Martín Lousteau, with his surfer clothes and long, brown curly hair, looked nothing like any finance minister this country has ever seen. McWilliams was there too.
Although the talk was gloomy, there was still much laughter both on the stage and from the crowd as the four stars of the economic art proved that talk of bond yields, defaults and the consequences of global economic collapse could be both engaging and illuminating.
Later that night four comics including Des Bishop and Neil Delamere joined the economists on stage, proving that maybe economics is the new stand-up and not the new rock’n’roll, although all the humour was definitely from the gallows.
Ireland's most dismal scientists? Five talking heads
David McWilliams
Affable or hard-nosed, depending on where you stand, McWilliams has lost patience and wants to take back the money we gave the bondholders. And he wants it back for good.
Alter ego:Gary Barlow
Morgan Kelly
Who do you think you are, asked many old-school economists when Kelly appeared on the scene waving the crystal ball and predicting a huge pop in our property bubble.
Alter ego:Scary Spice
Brian Lucey
Heaven knows we’re miserable now. It’s hard not to be, after listening to this man’s relentlessly bleak predictions about our future for the past three years.
Alter ego:Morrissey
Constantin Gurdgiev
We’ve lost control of our destiny and this man wants to tell us all about it. With all this dark, brooding menace he could drain the joy out of meeting Santa Claus.
Alter ego: Ian Curtis
Colm McCarthy
Blood on the tracks? And on the chairs and carpets and pretty much everywhere else, so savage were the cuts proposed by the Godfather of Sold.
Alter ego:Bob Dylan
