Episodes

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 rea...

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 mar...

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 re...

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 Ca...

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 intern...

We need a new approach to building trust in economic and monetary systems, says Ian Grigg, my guest on the latest episode of the New Money Review podcast. Grigg, a computer scientist and cryptographer, is one of the pioneers of internet-based money. In the 1990s, he worked on digital cash systems, which applied strong cryptography systems to money transfers. Grigg also published articles on shared ledgers, triple-entry accounting, proof-of-work systems, smart contracts and social reputation sy...

In the latest episode of the New Money Review podcast I’m joined by someone who says we’re in the middle of a historic battle between the public and private sector over money. And it’s one the state can’t afford to lose, he argues. Our future global money will be digital, cheap and mobile, says Richard Holden, professor of economics at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, but it may be issued by a tech giant or an emerging economy rather than the Federal Reserve, European Centr...

In the latest episode of the New Money Review podcast I’m delighted to welcome Satyajit Das, a former investment banker, derivatives expert and author. His book “Traders, Guns and Money”, published in 2006, remains one of the best books ever written about the world of high finance. It’s been called “a wickedly comic exposé of the culture, games and pure deceptions played out every day in trading rooms around the world. And played out with other people’s money.” Das went on to publish “Extreme...

Excitement over the prospects for artificial intelligence (AI) has driven US stock market valuations to a historic high. Can AI technologies deliver on their promise? Or is this yet another case of irrational exuberance? In the latest New Money Review podcast I am joined by Eric Siegel, a former Columbia University professor who has taught computer science courses in machine learning and AI. Siegel, now a consultant, has just published a new book called “The AI Playbook—Mastering the Rare Art o...

Against an uncertain economic backdrop, one industry is booming. Internet fraudsters are scamming more and more victims worldwide. Using increasingly sophisticated methods, they are now stealing even from the most prepared among us. But while the number of online frauds and the volumes of money involved are increasing, so are the efforts to stop scammers. In the latest New Money Review podcast, I’m joined by Simon Miller, director of policy and communications at Stop Scams UK. In the podcast...

If you thought tax was boring, the latest New Money Review podcast will change your mind. Dan Neidle was a top corporate lawyer for 23 years—ending up as head of tax at London law firm Clifford Chance. But in 2022 he retired to set up a new think tank called Tax Policy Associates. Its aim is to improve UK tax policy and to improve the public understanding of the subject. This nerdish-sounding mission statement gave no indication of the political fireworks Neidle’s new venture was shortly to i...

Financial markets go up and down. And they usually fall faster than they rise. But when does normal financial market turbulence tip over into a systemic collapse? How should policymakers prepare and how should they react? In the latest New Money Review podcast, I interview Steven Kelly, associate director of research at the Yale Programme on Financial Stability. The programme’s mission is to create, disseminate and preserve knowledge about financial crises. In the podcast, we cover: What def...

In the latest episode of the New Money Review podcast I’m delighted to welcome Tim Congdon, an economist and leading advocate of monetarism. After a successful career in the City, Tim became founder and chair of the Institute of International Monetary Research at the University of Buckingham. I’ve followed his work for over three decades. In the early 1990s, when I was working as a bond fund manager, the UK’s central bank was keeping interest rates at over 10% in an attempt to make sterling s...

We often look at colonial empires as territories gained and occupied by nation states. But across four centuries, colonialism has above all been the business of companies, says my interviewee in the latest New Money Review podcast. Philip Stern is the author of a new book called ‘Empire, Incorporated’, in which he explores the role of the company in British colonial history. In it, he argues that corporations conceived, promoted, financed, and governed overseas expansion, making claims over te...

Tim Yunusov is hacker with a special interest in banking and payment systems. He’s also written a series of articles on hacking for New Money Review. He’s been hired by financial institutions to see if he could breach their online banking systems and mobile apps, their card payment systems or their automated teller machines (ATMs). In many cases he could. In 2019, for example, he showed how to get around the limit on contactless card payments (£30 at the time in the UK) by altering the inform...

In this episode I’m joined by Kyle Gibson, a senior staff researcher and writer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Open Learning initiative. I’ve been following Kyle on Twitter for years, where he has been a consistently funny and well-informed critic of the crazy world of cryptocurrency. Today he joins the podcast to talk about another tech utopia that’s in the headlines: artificial intelligence or ‘AI’. Are the claims made for AI overblown? How are AI models developed? What huma...

2023 has been a year of bank runs, most notably in the US. What’s going on? And how should we invest in response? In the latest New Money Review podcast, I talk money, credit, banking and markets with Alex Gloy, founder and chief executive of Lighthouse Investment Management. Listen in to hear us discuss: What is money? The role of credit in the monetary system Interest and the sustainability of debt Why a bitcoin-based monetary system can’t work Digital bank runs and the stability of ban...

Former banker Sean Tuffy tracks the impact of global financial regulation on the investment business. In recent years he’s been paying a lot of attention to cryptocurrencies, digital assets and tokenisation. In the latest New Money Review podcast we cover: How the FTX collapse will impact financial regulation Why the US is playing catch-up over crypto rules Comparing the Bankman-Fried and Madoff frauds Why crypto bankruptcies are so complex Should we regulate crypto or let it burn? Why th...

Since the coronavirus pandemic, many of us have switched from paying by cash to paying almost exclusively by card or digital wallet. My guest on the latest New Money Review podcast is someone who argues that, contrary to the mainstream narrative, the boom in digital payments hasn’t benefited either businesses or consumers. Management consultant Bob Lyddon says that UK payments have become the domain of a technocratic elite, which is working in tandem with big tech firms and the major payment c...

It’s been a torrid year for investors in cryptocurrency but the worst is not over, says Carol Alexander, my guest on the latest New Money Review podcast. In 2023 the crash will shift to decentralised finance (DeFi), predicts Alexander. DeFi, she argues in the podcast, is repeating the mistakes of the centralised crypto lending schemes—like BlockFi, Celsius and Voyager—that faltered this year. And DeFi’s “magic money tree” is bound to fail in the same way, she says. Alexander is professor of f...

An auditor verifies the accuracy of a company’s financial records. He or she is supposed to spot any material misstatements, including those due to fraud or errors. And yet in two of the largest financial frauds in history—the 2021 collapse of German payment firm Wirecard and the recent bankruptcy of crypto exchange FTX—auditors had placed a stamp of approval on the companies’ accounts. How did they get things so badly wrong? To find out how audits can mislead I’m joined on the latest New Mon...

We are living in the golden age of fraud. But we’re also in a golden age for data leaks. In the last six years we’ve seen a cascade of information from places like Panama, Switzerland and Dubai—these are countries where lawyers, accountants and bankers promise secrecy while serving the rich and powerful. The tens of millions of leaked documents have helped shine light on the financial affairs of the wealthy and well-connected. But they’ve also opened the ill-gotten gains of many corrupt polit...

There are periods in human history when money and foreign policy converge—and this is one of them, says Paul Tucker, my guest on the latest New Money Review podcast. Tucker, deputy governor of the Bank of England for several years in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, is now a fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy school of public policy and government. During what is his first-ever podcast interview, Tucker talks about his new book, ‘Global Discord: Values and Power in a Fractured W...

In his 2017 book, “Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin”, David Birch predicted that we would all live in a world of multiple competing currencies. And communities, said Birch, would be one of the five main future issuers of money (along with four other “Cs”—central banks, commercial banks, cryptographic protocols like bitcoin, and companies). But community currencies have so far struggled to get off the ground. In the UK, attempts to launch a local version of the pound in Brixton, Bristol and else...