How a Rural Irish Farmer Became an Expert on the Euro Crisis

Joe Weisenthal (0:06)

Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal, managing editor of Bloomberg Markets. My colleague and co-host, Tracy Alloway, is away this week. She's out in the desert and on safari near Abu Dhabi.

So we miss her this week, but we have a special episode this week. Another one of our colleagues is with us. Today, we're going to talk to, or me, I guess I should say, today I'm going to talk to Lorcan Roche Kelly. He's our handyman, social media expert at Bloomberg Markets, also an expert on the Eurozone, the ECB.

And most extraordinarily, he comes to us from the small town or village of Six Mile Bridge, Ireland, where he has a farm with cows. And I'm pretty sure he's the only person in Six Mile Bridge who has a Bloomberg terminal. I don't know that for sure, but I'm like 99.9% sure. And we're going to talk a little bit about what's going on in the Eurozone these days. There's a lot of tension once again around government and the banks. But before we get to that conversation, I want to talk to Lorcan about how he became a farmer who is also an expert on the ECB. So Lorcan, thank you very much for joining the Odd Lots podcast.

Lorcan Roche Kelly (1:37)

Joe, great to be here.

Joe Weisenthal (1:38)

So Lorcan, let's start from the beginning. There are many people who are experts on the ECB and the Eurozone who also live on an operating farm with cows.

What's your background? Where does your story start? Take us from as far back as you'd like to go.

Lorcan Roche Kelly (1:59)

I suppose we'll start the bit that people might be interested in, which is how I got to be where I am. I suppose the start of it starts out with a bit of a tragedy in a way that I used to work as an explosives engineer in a mine, which, just straight up, is the best job in the world. At the end of every day, no matter how bad your day is being, you get to blow up a lot of stuff, which is incredibly therapeutic. I think everybody should get to blow something up at some point.

It would solve many of the world's problems.

Joe Weisenthal (2:27)

What are the kind of skills that you have to have to be an explosive engineer? What is the job really involved in?

Lorcan Roche Kelly (2:33)

You have to be able to run really fast. That's the number one skill, I think. Basically, what it is with explosives, when you're exposing it in a mine, you have to be able to design an explosive blast in a way that it'll blast what you want to blast and leave everything else alone. It's very important that you don't blow up the stuff you don't want to blow up. And my background is engineering, so that's kind of spatial development, stuff like that.

It was kind of what I was doing anyway.

Joe Weisenthal (2:59)

So this was in Ireland. What kind of mining is big in Ireland?

Lorcan Roche Kelly (3:02)

It's a base metal, lead and zinc mines. One of the biggest lead-zinc mines in Europe is in Ireland.

I think it's pretty much mined out at the moment. It's been there since the 1970s.

Joe Weisenthal (3:12)

All right, so let's take the next step. So then what did you do after...?

Lorcan Roche Kelly (3:16)

So in 2007, my first wife died, and I've left with two children.

So I was in mining, which meant I traveled a lot. So obviously, I had to stop that job, come home, look after the kids, and I found myself in a position where I was very time-rich and cash-poor. And if you remember 2007, 2008, there was one event that was dominating the world at the time.

Joe Weisenthal (3:38)

I think I remember that.

Lorcan Roche Kelly (3:39)

And that was the financial crisis. So I was, like I said, I was time-rich. So I started looking into this going, okay, I'm naturally curious, I suppose. So I started looking at this going, okay, what's causing this? What does it mean?

And I found a lot of the coverage I was reading was very samey. And then that what I mean is like everyone was on the same path, saying the same thing, saying the same, like the euro is going to fall apart.

The whole world is going to hell in a hand basket by gold.

Joe Weisenthal (4:02)

So you hadn't studied this before. You don't have a background in economics or finance or anything like that.