in the 1990s that the circumstances were in place to create a housing bubble in Ireland, and had predicted a massive crash in the early 2000s which did not happen at that time; after Ireland recovered from the economic shock of 9/11 and the foot and mouth crisis, and his predictions were dismissed as alarmist, he expanded on his initial theory by describing Ireland's housing boom as a "confidence trick" by "an unholy alliance of bankers, landowners and a pliant political class" which would collapse resulting "in a generation in negative equity" on RTÉ. McWilliams was one of a number of commentators criticised for talking down the economy and damaging consumer sentiment. In 2008 and 2009, the Irish economy was especially exposed to the global economic downturn in a manner very similar to that predicted by McWilliams. Bank Guarantee McWilliams was initially supportive of the bank guarantee of September 2008, describing Brian Lenihan's action as a "masterstroke" and claiming that by "coming up with a unique, Irish plan -- guaranteeing all deposits -- instead of importing a failed solution from abroad, he has instilled confidence in the Irish financial system." McWilliams even predicted that it would "obliterate[s] " the hedge funds who were short selling the Irish financial sector. It subsequently emerged that McWilliams had advised Lenihan on this policy. Regarding the specific implementation of the bank guarantee, he explained in 2011 that his view was that it should have been rescinded (as originally envisaged) rather than prolonged, saying:"Rescind the guarantee. It was due to expire last September and was always supposed to be temporary. This guarantee should not have been open-ended and all-encompassing. It should have copied the Swiss and Swedish model, where those countries lent the credibility of the state to the banks. Unfortunately, our Government didn't so much lend the State's credibility to the banks as give it to them unconditionally". NAMA McWilliams said that, providing the banks were reformed, some sort of "bad bank" would be necessary. One idea is to divide our banks into good and bad banks. We could set up one or two bad banks, which would be "financial skips" into which we throw bad loans. In 2009 McWilliams criticised NAMA as proposed, and was in turn criticised by Brian Lenihan. Economic and Monetary Union During the post 2008 Financial Crisis, McWilliams questioned Ireland's continued participation in the Economic and Monetary Union of