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The Day George Soros Broke the Bank of England to Make $1.1B (2021)

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Re: The Day George Soros Broke the Bank of England to Make $1.1B (2021)

#81

Post by regularfry »

jddil wrote: post #70

The Day the Bank of England was caught in an artificial pumping scheme is way more accurate of a title. But I guess anything to smear Soros and the "left" gets upvoted to HN nowadays. Connection being the authoritative right sees Soros as the analog to the Koch bros.... not quite understanding we don't like capitalists anymore than the right likes socialists. But hey Soros === bad, leftist === bad so to the top of HN…

George Soros has been known as "The Man Who Broke The Bank of England" pretty much since it happened. It's a riff on a much earlier phrase, "the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo", which has been around since the 19th century, referring to a gambler. It pre-dates the current right's antisemitic obsession with him by quite a long way, and I don't think it's been used as a pejorative term at all - more a mark of respect. But I could be wrong about that.

Re: The Day George Soros Broke the Bank of England to Make $1.1B (2021)

#82

Post by jen20 »

makomk wrote: post #58
NikolaNovak wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. In Canada you can only get up to 5 years fixed typically. Mortgage itself is 25 years but terms change every 5 usually. 30y fixed feels... Crazy. How much above market does it have to be for banks to take that risk??

The banks don't take the risk of offering such long-term fixed rates. The US government does through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, effectively subsidising the mortgage market. Other countries don't do this and don't have the same kind of long-term fixed mortgages as a result.

> The US government does through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, effectively subsidising the mortgage market.

For so-called "conforming" loans (647k USD this year), the equivalent of which would be enough to buy a nice house almost anywhere in the UK except London, the nicer parts of the Home Counties or the South West.

Re: The Day George Soros Broke the Bank of England to Make $1.1B (2021)

#83

Post by not2b »

jddil wrote: post #75
Jyaif wrote: post #3

> For many, it was obvious that the pound sterling was overvalued > The Bank of England was finally forced to give up the fight a few hours after the attack, announcing its exit from the European monetary system with a devaluation of about 15% Sounds like George Soros just fixed a disequilibrium? How is he the bad guy in this story?

He's the boogey man to a large portion of society. He makes the left look slightly bad so any chance to showcase he's just an evil capitalist that steals grandmas money rockets to the top of HN.

But he isn't really of "the left", he has mainly funded centrist Democrats, not the progressive wing; as you say, he is a capitalist. And his influence is greatly exaggerated.

Re: The Day George Soros Broke the Bank of England to Make $1.1B (2021)

#84

Post by shrubble »

"I am there to make money; I cannot and do not look at the social consequences of what I do" - George Soros

Someone who explicitly says that as a teenager, he enjoyed his time working for the Nazis while they were looting those targeted, is not going to be shamed over taking $1 billion in a trade.

See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGWizajL7tA compilation of clips from 60 Minutes interviews, etc. (from 3m45s he talks about his time helping to confiscate property from Hungarian Jews)

Re: The Day George Soros Broke the Bank of England to Make $1.1B (2021)

#85

Post by IMTDb »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #37
unmole wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bank of England which was responsible for artificially pumping up the value of sterling is a more appropriate target for blame.

You might even say forcing the prices of things to be accurate and exposing departures from reality is the purpose of financial markets and the thing an investor gets paid for. (How well that works is questionable; my completely amateur impression is that this view would force us to legalize insider trading while declaring HFT completely useless, for example.)

> declaring HFT completely useless, for example.

Please do ! The amount of resources invested in making HFT possible and profitable is no where close to being justified by the benefits it brings to society as a whole.

Making financial information move in days instead of week ? Sure !. In hours instead of days ? Yep !. In minutes instead of hours ? Why Not !. In seconds instead of minutes ? Mmmh yeah, I guess. In milliseconds instead of seconds ? Stop it. Opening a road to put high quality cables and hiring some of the most clever folks on the planet to cut half a milisec on a buy/sell algo ? Fuck you.

Re: The Day George Soros Broke the Bank of England to Make $1.1B (2021)

#86

Post by parasense »

unmole wrote: post #21
sam537 wrote: post #2

It's great to talk in terms of indices and devaluations and of "breaking the bank of England". The lives affected are not even spared an afterthought.

The Bank of England which was responsible for artificially pumping up the value of sterling is a more appropriate target for blame.

Agreed.

It's basic game theory, understanding adversarial finance, and applying risk management practices at the sovereign state (central bank) level.

It does seem strange today to bet somewhere in the neighborhood of $7 ~ $8 billions, to only realize a capital gain of ~$1 billion, but it's actually a really impressive ~14% return.

The issue I suppose is where taking that adversarial position, and then being outspoken about the topic, in essence a variation of pump'n'dump for short sellers... proclaim the doom of the British sterling, and the doom becomes real via market awareness.... or, is "market awareness" really just market manipulation?

Re: The Day George Soros Broke the Bank of England to Make $1.1B (2021)

#87

Post by DeWilde »

boxed wrote: post #20
csdvrx wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The lives affected are not even spared an afterthought Look at it from a software perspective: there was a huge vulnerability possible. If it hadn't been exploited by this person, someone else would have. It was the Bank of England fault for not patching the exploit and creating the vulnerability.

It was your fault for not putting on a helmet and allowing me to hit you with a steel pipe and take your money. See the problem? There's a reason it's illegal to exploit vulnerabilities in software. It's even illegal to exploit them in humans (mostly). It's called fraud.

In a world where there are people that will hit you with a steel pipe and will not be stopped by the legality of the matter then it is your fault for not putting on the helmet.

But that isn't a good comparison for this case as what he did was not illegal. Unlike hitting people with steel pipes.

Re: The Day George Soros Broke the Bank of England to Make $1.1B (2021)

#88

Post by kmeisthax »

gadders wrote: post #9
Jyaif wrote: post #3

> For many, it was obvious that the pound sterling was overvalued > The Bank of England was finally forced to give up the fight a few hours after the attack, announcing its exit from the European monetary system with a devaluation of about 15% Sounds like George Soros just fixed a disequilibrium? How is he the bad guy in this story?

He's done plenty of bad stuff before and since.

Soros in his own head: Enlightened Capitalist who is using his financial might to create an Open Society™ where progressive values are wholeheartedly embraced

Soros in the heads of lunatics: Big Bad Scary Commie looking to make the capitalist system eat itself so he can usher in a new Global Soviet Socialist Republic with an army of third-world refugees - specifically the scary[0] ones with brown skin or poor English skills - to play the role of Randian moocher class

Soros in reality: Rich banker idiot who made billions of dollars ensuring the UK will never be able to join the Euro while throwing millions of it (0.1%) at random vaguely left-of-center causes to buy the secular equivalent of indulgences[1]

[0] fnord fnord fnord

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence#Late_Medieval_usage

Re: The Day George Soros Broke the Bank of England to Make $1.1B (2021)

#90

Post by unmole »

falcolas wrote: post #61
unmole wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That seems to translate to "workers were getting paid less and their savings were devalued" to me. Am I mistaken? Sure, that's one way to look at it. But then you have to ask yourself why countries deliberately try to devalue their currencies and why other countries get mad when that happens.

I don't know, why would workers whose compensation has been effectively cut be mad at some billionaire who did it to make more billions? This isn't just about countries as an abstract. It's about the people and the impact on them.

> whose compensation has been effectively cut

Black Wednesday happened in 1992. In 1991 inflation in the UK was 7.46%, in 1992 it dropped to 4.59% and in 1993 to 2.56%. So, who was really responsible for reducing the purchasing power of British workers? Soros or the BoE?

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