Lyddon Consulting Services | Blog | Lyddon Consulting

Response to HM Treasury’s Future of Payments’ call for input

Published on 29th August 2023

This is my response to the Future of Payments’ call for input.

You can download it here.

The call for input used that terrible cliché ‘payment journeys’, and I re-interpreted that as meaning journeys to a utility room to rinse out and eradicate Retained EU Law and the wider market practices, ways-of-thinking, detriments […]

Relying on a data vendor for lists of Politically-Exposed Persons is a nonsense

Cover of JMLSG guidance

Published on 2nd August 2023.

The article was previously published by Global Britain on 1st August 2023

Introduction

The UK’s financial services industry has invented for itself the right to use data providers to identify Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs). The de-banking of Nigel Farage by Coutts/Natwest has shone a light on this regime which the […]

InvestEU, NetZero and the growing debts of EU citizens

As presented at the IES-IREF Summer University in Aix 20-22 July 2023

Published on 27th July 2023

I made a presentation at the IES-IREF Summer University in Aix-en-Provence about an aspect of my book, ‘The shadow liabilities of EU Member States, and the threat they pose to global financial stability’.

The relevant aspect is the build-up of off-balance […]

The European Stability Mechanism hangs by a thread – on France’s credit rating

The ESM and its image

Published on 26th July 2023

As previously published on IREF Europe: https://en.irefeurope.org/publications/online-articles/article/the-european-stability-mechanism-hangs-by-a-thread-on-frances-credit-rating/

Introduction

The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) backstops the euro. Its nominal size is €705 billion but its lending capacity is lower at €500 billion, and the main condition attached to that is that the member states guarantees of the ESM’s solvency […]

FarageGate shows the ‘Trusted KYC Data Sharing’ project must be stopped

Payment Systems Regulator strategy to introduce ‘Trusted KYC Data Sharing’

Published on 11th July 2023

Whatever one’s opinion of Nigel Farage, the concept that he can be de-banked should be troubling to everyone. It should be even more troubling to those familiar with the financial industry’s measures to counter financial crime, as remedies being applied by banks […]

Commentary on The Payments Association’s letter to Lord Johnson about the proposed widening of the coverage for victims of Authorised Push Payment Fraud (APPF)

Letter to Lord Johnson

Published on 10th July 2023

The Payments Association has sent a letter to Lord Johnson about the proposed widening of the coverage for victims of Authorised Push Payment Fraud (APPF):

Letter to Lord Johnson from The Payments Association

The letter raises three areas of concern, which could have unintended consequences:

1. Almost all consumers experiencing APP fraud will get their money back (unless they […]

Eurozone’s ‘shadow debts’ start to become real ones, and threaten the Bundesbank with bankruptcy

Published by The Bruges Group on 29 June 2023

Published on 7th July 2023

The German Federal Audit Office (‘Bundesrechnungshof’) has warned that the Bundesbank may need a bailout due to losses on the EUR650 billion of bonds it bought as part of the Eurozone’s equivalent of Quantitative Easing. The Daily Telegraph reported on this on 26 […]

UK inflation is a threat to financial stability – time to conceal that with tried and tested Eurozone techniques

As published on IREF Europe

Published on 6th July 2023

UK Consumer Price Inflation remained at 8.7% in May. The Bank of England has raised the cost of overnight money to 5% via increases in its Base Rate, and has caused the cost of medium-term money to rise by selling off the bonds that it bought since […]

‘Digital pound’ will not be ‘central bank money’ if there are deductions or a settlement delay

‘Digital pound’ consultation

Published on 28th June 2023

We have sent an addendum to our previous response to this consultation on the ‘digital pound’.

Its message is that the ‘digital pound’ will not be a form of ‘central bank money’ if its so-called Distribution Model replicates what happens in the Visa and Mastercard ecosystems on three points.

The consultation […]

There cannot be a Euro ‘Central Bank Digital Currency’ – because there isn’t any Euro ‘Central Bank Money’

From the ECB’s website

Published on 27th June 2023

The European Central Bank is one of several institutions in the central banking world to be investigating the introduction of a ‘Central Bank Digital Currency’ or CBDC. They refer to it as the ‘digital euro’.

The above paragraphs are from their website section about the ‘digital euro’ project and […]