The Dublin professional classes had become very wealthy in the boom. And the extraordinary thing about all this was that, in the main, they didn't take any risks. They just worked hard, charged huge fees and, with both eyes firmly set on leafy suburbs, moved up the ladder. They had huge status and, in some cases, egos to match.

In the meantime, the lads who had done pass maths in the Leaving Cert were also on the make, but they were in business and property. They were making even more money than the straight-A boys. They were buying and selling, wheeling and dealing and, most of all, flipping.

They had seemed to be able to make money out of nothing, buying property and then selling the stuff on in a few months - making an enormous and seemingly effortless twist.The `stupid' lads, at least in the eyes of the straight-A students, were achieving far above their abilities - and it all seemed so easy.

This is not what the system and the doting mothers had predicted. They, the professional class, should be on top - after all, hadn't they done honours Latin, Irish, French and maths - not to mention the sciences - for the Leaving Cert? The `stupid' lads just kept buying and selling, and now they had this new thing called leverage, which made the gains astronomical.

So, around 2005, just as the market was peaking, the smart lads decided to get into the game. They were invited by the `stupid' lads they knew in school to get into what were termed `syndicates'. The less academic fellas were putting these things together all day, promising riches beyond their smart lads' wives dreams. They all knew each other, after all, so everything would be grand.

Because the smart fellas had never taken a risk in their life, they had no idea how to access risk. They thought it was easy to become a Dermot Desmond.

They thought that the type of calculations someone like him was doing on a minute byminute basis couldn't be that difficult, particularly as lads four streams below them in school could figure it out. And so, about four years ago, the complexion of the property market changed.

It became a free-for-all for the lads who'd done well in their Leaving Cert, but wouldn't know how to `take their profits' in a month of Sundays.

The people they used to look down on - the pass maths students - saw them coming and began to sell property syndicates to them, pretending that the clever lads were getting the deal of the decade.

So the professional classes, having been told from their childhood onwards that they were geniuses, were too arrogant and hubristic to know they were being had. After all, why would they not think they were smarter than the lads who had sold them the deals? They were smarter, and they had the UCD parchment on their mammies' living-room wall to prove it.

But, in truth, the smart boys knew nothing about commerce, and had just bought a pig in a poke. Then the crash happened, and the chill could be felt in the equity partner offices of our top law and accountancy firms. These guys are now bankrupt, with enormous cash calls being made to finance the syndicates that are now under water. The top barristers and bankers were equally hammered, because they didn't understand the rudiments of commerce. They thought it was easy. We are now left with the destruction of Dublin's - and other cities' - professional classes.