This is Unseen Money from New Money Review.

I’m Paul Amery and I’m joined by my co-host, security researcher Timur Yunusov.

Unseen money is our journey into the darker corners of digital payments.

For many of us, transferring money is now faster and easier than ever before. It takes a couple of swipes on a smartphone.

But with digital payments have come many new opportunities for criminals.

Perhaps you’ve suffered from a phishing attack, an ID theft or a cryptocurrency scam.

Maybe an online purchase went wrong, but you’re not sure how.

We’re here to investigate—and to report to you in non-technical language.

In this episode of the podcast, Timur and I discuss the UK’s new rules for compensating people who’ve been tricked into transferring money to criminals.

Have the rules deterred the scammers? Or have they just moved on to another type of payment fraud? Listen on for more.

The latest New Money Review podcast focuses on Trump, tariffs, deglobalisation and the currency markets.

My guest, Mark Astley, is a former colleague, a currency and fixed income specialist who recently retired as chief executive of asset manager Millennium Global Investments.

“We are living in an epochal time in the history of exchange rates and trade policy,” Astley says in the podcast.

During the recording, Astley suggests the 53-year experiment with a dollar-based floating exchange rate system may be coming to an end—and he suggests that tariff wars and rising geopolitical turmoil may bring an end to dollar dominance as well.

Listen in for a 30-minute discussion of the backdrop and outlook for global currencies. We cover:

• The benefits and costs of post-1971 exchange rate flexibility
• The great disinflation of 1981-2021 and the recent return to higher inflation
• Trump, tariffs, supply chains and interest rates
• Which global economies are least and most exposed to a trade war?
• Why dollar dominance may end slowly, then suddenly
• The breakdown of post-WW2 global institutions
• Implications for currency markets, precious metals and cryptocurrencies

In the last decade, the way we make our payments has become more seamless, faster and cheaper.

We’ve switched from signatures on paper cheques to a few swipes and a tap on a mobile phone.

But with these advances have come massive new opportunities for cybercriminals.

From cons using deception and social engineering to romance fraud, unauthorised transfers, hacks and identity theft, the cat and mouse game between scammers and those policing the payments system has now reached a new level of intensity.

In the latest New Money Review podcast I’m joined to discuss this topic by Steven Murdoch, professor of security engineering at University College, London.

During the podcast, we cover:

• Why technologists, lawyers and economists all focus on payments security
• How should we treat victims of payments fraud?
• Why tricking customers into transferring funds is now the most lucrative payments scam
• How limits on customer reimbursement may cause banks to stop pursuing fraudsters
• Balancing responsibilities in customer reimbursement schemes
• How AI may help payments fraudsters cast a wider net
• How the parameters of banks’ online payments systems can feed or starve fraud
• Does more secure always mean harder to use?
• Cross-border fraud and the reversibility of payments
• Cryptocurrency from the perspective of payments security
• Telegram and tensions over encrypted messaging networks
• The Horizon scandal and the legal presumption of reliable IT systems

When, why and how do countries go bust? That’s the topic of the latest New Money Review podcast, where I’m joined by Greg Makoff, a former physicist, banker, government advisor and now senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Makoff is the author of a recent book on what has been called “the most contentious default in history”—Argentina’s 2001-2016 debt restructuring.

In the podcast, we discuss:

• When, why and how countries go bust
• What distinguishes a sovereign insolvency from a corporate or personal bankruptcy
• Who has jurisdiction over sovereign defaults?
• What brings governments and creditors to the table?
• Sovereign immunity and the negotiating power between debtor and creditor
• What went wrong in Argentina’s debt restructuring?
• How Elliott Capital Management made billions on defaulted Argentinian debt
• The broader public policy lessons of Argentina’s debt restructuring
• China, the IMF and the geopolitics of sovereign debt
• Default risk in domestic and foreign currency bonds
• Why sovereign debt problems will never go away

Supporters of the $10trn private equity industry say it fuels economic growth and delivers leaner, better-performing companies.

One leading critic of the sector is Ludovic Phalippou, who says that the industry routinely overstates its financial performance. And, he says, private equity funds charge a whopping 6-7% a year in fees, wiping out any potential benefits to investors.

In the latest New Money Review podcast, I interview Phalippou, who is professor of financial economics at Oxford University. We cover:

• What is private equity?
• How big is the private equity market?
• Why have private equity assets grown fivefold in a decade?
• What is the economic footprint of private equity?
• How should we measure private equity funds’ performance?
• How honest are private equity firms in reporting performance?
• Do private equity funds have higher returns than public equity funds?
• What do private equity funds cost?
• Agency conflicts in the private equity industry
• The impact of recent interest rate rises on private equity
• The need for standardised reporting of private equity performance.

Want to know what happens when fraud is a core component of your business model?

Want to know how a business idea described as an “economic fairytale” could be valued at $300m?

Want to know how an unknown cryptocurrency exchange could end up with a $1bn a year marketing budget, rivalling that of Microsoft?

Want to know how easy it is to corrupt auditors and journalists with crypto tokens?

All this is in Crypto Confidential, a new book by Jake Donoghue that’s coming out in August 2024.

I read a review copy, really enjoyed it and have invited Jake to talk to New Money Review podcast listeners.

Donoghue describes his book as “a record of the sheer extravagance, excess and absurdity I bore witness to on a daily basis”.

In the podcast we discuss:

• How an unviable betting start-up could be worth $300m on its first day of trading
• Why its founders switched focus from gambling to marketing
• Duplicitous tactics, shilling, pumping and dumping in crypto
• The confluence of politics and cryptocurrency
• Why did the cryptocurrency markets recover after the 2022 FTX/Terra/Luna frauds?
• From bitcoin to ICOs, NFTs and memecoins: how crypto has lost touch with its origins
• How influencer crypto marketing hit its peak in 2022
• When Bybit’s reported $1bn a year marketing budget rivalled Microsoft’s
• The innovation of crypto fundraising
• Why crypto journalism is an oxymoron
• Tether and sanctions evasion
• Why crypto projects are jumping onto the AI bandwagon
• What next for cryptocurrency?

In the latest New Money Review podcast, I interview Richard Comotto, a specialist in repo, the multi-trillion dollar marketplace used by large financial institutions to borrow and lend money in the short term.

Richard, who started his career at the Bank of England, works for the International Capital Markets Association (ICMA), for whom he has authored the ICMA “Guide to Best Practice in the European Repo Market”, its website FAQs on repo and the semi-annual survey of the ICMA European repo market, which has been running since 2000.

He has also advised on the development of domestic money and repo markets for bodies such as the Asian Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

He is also co-founder and chief product officer at London Reporting House, a fintech providing data and analytics on the repo market.

In the podcast, we cover:

• What is the repo market?
• The role of repo in the bond markets
• Did repo help trigger the 2008 financial crisis?
• The difference between repo and a pledge
• The difference between repo and a securities loan
• Why repo has largely replaced unsecured wholesale lending
• When and how can repo go wrong?
• How do central banks use repo?
• Is quantitative tightening (QT) the reverse of quantitative easing (QE)?
• The effect of blockchain on the repo market
• How shorter settlement cycles affect repo
• Could central clearing trigger a repo market accident?

The Stoic philosophers said we should manage our emotions when it comes to money and wealth.

But is this a realistic goal? How can we resist the siren call of riches? How can we persevere and stay positive through tough economic times?

In this episode of the New Money Review podcast I’m joined by Donald Robertson, philosopher, psychotherapist and author of best-selling books on how to apply Stoic principles to modern life.

In the podcast, we cover:

• Who were the Stoics?
• Why have we turned repeatedly to them over the centuries?
• What explains the latest surge of interest in their ideas?
• Stoicism and stoicism
• Why the former is good and the latter is bad for your mental health
• How Marcus Aurelius’s meditations speak to all of us
• The Stoics’ sophisticated understanding of emotions
• Why strong emotions cause cognitive biases
• Why we are blind to our own biases
• Stoic practices and modern methods of cognitive distancing
• Stoic beliefs on wealth and money
• Were the early Stoics communists?
• How the Stoics could save democracy

Almost half of the crime now committed in the UK is now fraud, most of it taking place online. But only 1% of police resources are devoted to catching the fraudsters.

In the last New Money Review podcast I looked into how to bridge this alarming gap, exploring the mindset of the cybercriminal with my guest Sarah Armstrong-Smith.

In this episode I dig into a small, but disturbing and rapidly growing part of the multi-trillion electronic crime business—romance fraud.

My guest is Dr Elisabeth Carter, a criminologist and forensic linguist who works at the intersection of language and the law.

She’s recently published a book in which she shows how criminal gangs exploit language to lure and then cheat their victims.

Romance fraudsters exploit psychological weak points as well, making it look as if they are on the victims’ side. As a result, when the fraud is exposed, the victim suffers both monetary and psychological harm. Even worse, the rest of us then often blame the victims, says Carter.

Listen in for the next 30 minutes to learn more—and how best to protect yourself.

We cover:

• Why a romance fraud often seems normal at the beginning
• How fraudsters harness the context
• Why a fraudster invites protective responses from the victim
• Secrecy, isolation and urgency—trademarks of the crime
• Why romance fraud is a long con
• Why fraudsters give gifts
• Coercive control--the psychological harms of romance fraud
• How a romance fraud may escalate to physical threats
• Negligence or abuse—should banks compensate fraud victims?

Cybercrime is often more than just a demonstration of hacking skills.

The attacker could be motivated by money, but equally by nationalism, a search for notoriety or revenge. The victim may be random and innocent, but he/she could have been singled out because of an emotional weak spot. Following the crime, other human emotions, such as guilt or shame, may prevent the attack from being disclosed.

So when addressing cybercrime, we need to focus as much on psychology as on technology.

As internet-enabled fraud reaches ever more alarming proportions, in the latest New Money Review podcast I interview Sarah Armstrong-Smith, author of a new book called “Understand the Cyber Attacker Mindset”.

In the podcast, we cover:

• Why pandemics and war are great news for fraudsters
• The amplification effect of social media
• How disinformation campaigns drive polarisation in society
• Why nation-state hackers are well-resourced and focused
• Why cybercrime and fraud are the invisible crime
• How police forces are scrambling to catch up
• "Pig-butchering": blaming the victims of fraud
• Seeing frauds as human-to-human relationships
• Bolstering our defences as organisations and individuals
• The need for transparency about cyberattacks
• Why sanctions are most effective at the individual level