A global recession is on the horizon - please read OP for mod warning

McWilliams was generalising and spoofing. Kelly was crunching the numbers and his predictions were very accurate. He predicted both the housing crash and banking collapse. The so called Dr Doom never courted any fame was hated by a few scoundrels.

The prophet of doom, but Morgan has the last laugh | Irish Independent

He has been ridiculed, dismissed as a loony and his prescient predictions on the property crash were widely credited with provoking former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern's bewilderment in 2007 at why people on the sidelines "cribbing and moaning . . . don't commit suicide . . ."

In 2007, he wrote the iconic Irish Times column predicting that house prices would fall by 60pc. He was rubbished in many quarters, most notably by stakeholders in the property market.

Jim Power, also a prominent economist during the boom, told the Sunday Independent a few years ago that "one of the biggest embarrassments of his life" was to be negative about Mr Kelly's property predictions on Prime Time.

Anglo was on its way over the cliff but, publicly, the government was still talking about pumping in €1.5bn to keep it going. Morgan Kelly predicted that - based on the €80bn it had lent to developers - Anglo Irish Bank's losses would not be €15bn but could be twice that. The government's €1.5bn investment would "vaporise in months": "For all it will achieve, the money might as well be piled up in St Stephen's Green and incinerated," Mr Kelly wrote.

One thrusting banker raged on the phone to his strockbroker friend, presumably oblivious to the fact that their phone conversation was being recorded on the bank's internal system. Their macho, chest-thumbing hubris as they stewed with indignation over the article will be familiar to followers of the Anglo Tapes.

"Incinerate Morgan Kelly," said the stockbroker.

Mr Kelly hasn't played up his celebrity economist status. He is an academic who studied at Trinity College and Yale University in the US, was an assistant professor at Cornell University, a lecturer at University College Dublin and is currently professor of economics there. He doesn't blog or tweet and appeared on television once.