of the housing markets in Boston in the 1980s and Thailand in the early 1990s. In 1996 he predicted a recession by 2005, noting that EMU meant that Ireland would enjoy low interest rates tailored to European neighbours with far lower economic growth than Ireland. In 1998 he specified that in the event of a world recession, Irish house prices would drop by 20%. and predicted a crash by the year 2000. While the Irish Independent described him as "alarmist" in relation to these comments in 1998, the same article also added that mainstream Irish economists who disagreed with him were overly complacent. From 1999 to 2002, he was an emerging markets strategist with a New York-based hedge fund, Rockwest Capital. In 2000 – the year he had previously predicted that the Celtic Tiger would end - he warned of a "Hong Kong style property market collapse" in the not too distant future, noting that Ireland was experiencing labour shortages, rising asset prices and high borrowing (five times the then European rate and four times the then US rate). Brendan Keenan of the Irish Independent described him as "the best known critic of the Irish economy" at the time. During 2001 Ireland experienced a foot and mouth outbreak which had an impact on the economy, with some commentators declaring the Celtic Tiger to be dead. However, when the impact to the economy turned out to be less negative than anticipated, his critics dismissed his analysis of the fragile Irish economy as alarmist. 2000s: Writing and Broadcasting Since returning to work in Ireland, he presented a current affairs programme called Agenda on TV3, a breakfast radio show on NewsTalk 106 from 2002 to 2004 and a topical afternoon discussion programme called The Big Bite on the television station RTÉ One. All these shows were cancelled after relatively short runs. However, in 2005 McWilliams published his first book, The Pope's Children, which became a significant bestseller and firmly established his place as a household name in Ireland, well known enough to be referenced in the Ross O'Carroll-Kelly books and imitated on the satire TV show Irish Pictorial Weekly. In The Pope's Children, McWilliams applied ideas which he saw used with great effect in Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There by American conservative writer David Brooks to Ireland, creating neologisms to describe certain economic actors as stock