Cantillon: The problem with David McWilliams’s Argentinian example

In ancient times, people consulted tea leaves, soothsayers and the entrails of animals to predict the future. These days we have economists . But like the soothsayers of bygone years, they don’t always get it right – though they might have you believe they do.

Case in point: David McWilliams. McWilliams, like other Irish economists, was akin to a popstar in the boom times. He graced our TV screens almost as often as Anne Doyle and was one of the first to warn about the unsustainability of the boom. In 1998, he wrote that “fundamentals count for nothing if your house is built on a bubble”.

But you can’t be right all the time and the first economist to see that the Irish boom was nothing more than a credit bubble may get it wrong every now and again.

In 2011, McWilliams said Ireland should default and restructure its debt, adding that defaulting makes good business sense.

“There is life after default; in fact there is vibrant life. If we walked away from the bank debts in Ireland – debts that are not ours to pay – but continued to pay our sovereign debt, basic economics tells you that the economy would be stronger, not weaker; the balance sheet more robust; money that had left the country would come flooding back,” he said.

He went on to point out how Argentina has experienced years of “solid economic growth” since it defaulted.

Like Ireland, the entire establishment told Argentina that if it defaulted, the country would never grow again, he said.

“In the event, Argentina defaulted and 70 per cent of their debts were wiped out. The default happened in December 2002, and by April the economy had started to grow.”

But that was then. Argentina is now struggling again. The Argentinian president’s lauded “model” – central to what she has branded as the “victorious decade” – has sunk into the much-delayed crisis sceptics have long predicted .

The country has had a notoriously bad inflation rate for the better half of the past decade. When the government defaulted on some $100 billion in bonds in 2002, the inflation rate ran rampant and never fully recovered. The country seems to be heading toward bust again. At the end of January, the currency collapsed and Argentinians feared their country was lurching into a new episode of crises. It still could be heading for bust.

As The Economist said yesterday: "No other country came so close to joining the rich world, only to slip back."