Published on 12 January 2022
We have responded to the Payment Systems Regulator’s latest consultation on APP scams.
Their proposals continue the same, failed direction-of-travel as hitherto.
This problem could be solved, and completely, by legal changes that row back on EU payments legislation in the form of the 2017 Payment Services Regulations (based on the EU Payment […]
TARGET2: scale of invisible Eurozone liabilities demands action by global financial regulators
Published on 12 December 2021
We recently had a blog published by Politeia about the lack of transparency in the accounting for the debts of EU/Eurozone member states. The member states’ contingent liability to backstop the debts of the EU is an example. Member states […]
Published on 10 December 2021
The Eurosystem’s balance sheet now shows that its assets of €12 trillion exceed the Eurozone’s 2020 GDP of €11.4 trillion. This is attributable to the emergency response to Covid by the European Central Bank (ECB), who both created the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (the PEPP), extended the programme of unsecured loans […]
Published on 23 September 2021
You can DOWNLOAD HERE the technical blog that accompanies the Politeia article on extrapolating lessons for the Eurozone, UK and global banking systems from the proposed merger of UniCredit and Monta dei Paschi di Siena.
The case raises difficult questions about whether any meaningful re-capitalization of banking systems has occurred since the […]
Published on 23 September 2021
As Italy’s oldest bank is poised to merge with its second largest, Bob Lyddon considers the failure of Eurozone governance and its potential consequences – from which the UK is not immune
The UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement (2019) with its Northern Ireland Protocol remains one problematic matter of unfinished Brexit business. Less widely […]
This article as it appeared on CommentCentral on 4 August 2021
Published on 4 August 2021
A certain David Pitt, fresh from his triumphs as Chief Operating Officer of Test and Trace, has been appointed as Chief Executive Officer of Pay.UK, the company responsible for the UK’s main payment systems.
This is not a joke, although the timing […]
Published on 2 August 2021
It looks likely that Unicredit will be entering into a shotgun wedding with Mone dei Paschi di Siena (MPS). Unicredit will be compelled by the Italian political and monetary authorities to act as a White Knight.
MPS just failed its European Banking Authority Stress Tests but then it has been flat broke […]
Title page of PSR’s latest emission on the scope and tendering process for NPA
Published on 30 July 2021
What started out as a Temple of Solomon to revolutionise the UK’s payment systems will now be reduced to a more manageable bungalow-sized development. Multiple layers collapse down to one.
The
UK’s Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), who started this show […]
Two of the key patagraphs in the Withdrawal Treaty itself
Published on 20 July 2021
What are HM Treasury and the EU playing at? Their dispute rumbles on over whether the Brexit divorce bill is the EU’s estimate of £41bn or HM Treasury’s (or rather the Office for Budget Responsibility’s) of £35-39bn.
The discussion feels phoney. The quoted […]
This is the actual agreement…
Published on 19 July 2021
Below is the text of an article we had published on CapX last week about the bunfight between HM Treasury and Brussels on the supposed size of the Brexit divorce bill: in short, neither of them can know for sure what it is because of the loopholes […]