Comments by "Curious Crow" (@CuriousCrow-mp4cx) on "How George Soros Destroyed The British Pound" video.

  1. Patrick Boyle has done a video on this, and has more information that provides a more nuanced perspective. Soros is a trader in a capitalist system, and the mythos around him ignores a lot of his skill in interpreting information. Soros didn't just wake up one morning, and decide to make the trade. Stanley Druckenmiller, who was one of his portfolio managers, spotted the opportunity did the research and presented it to Soros as a potential trade. Information and analysis was key to discovering opportunity. If John Major and Norman Lamont hadn't been so optimistic about the effect of the ERM, they wouldn't have set the entry exchange rate for sterling so high. And perhaps, they hadn't been familiar with a similar error made by Winston Churchill in the 1920s, when he entered Sterling into the Gold Standard at an unsustainable exchange rate. That time it took, if my memory serves me, 5 years of economic turmoil, very similar to that on Black Wednesday, and for similar reasons, before Sterling crashed out of the Gold Standard. Soros understood that how people think and what they believe creates market conditions. And prices are information to be interrogated and tested against reality. Human psychology is important to understand markets.
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  2. Sorry, but that's simply not true. John Major thought that joining the ERM at that high exchange rate was the right thing to do. It wasn't, it was too high. And British traders made millions on the back of that. Why don't you hate them? Why don't you hate John Major or Norman Lamont? Why don't you hate Winston Churchill who did the same thing in the 1920s with the Gold Standard? That created nearly a decade of economic suffering and turmoil, which didn't stop until Britain crashed out of the Gold Standard in 1931. And the collective memory of that period probably contributed to his defeat in the 1945 election, despite his war service. If you have the time and inclination, read "England's Cross of Gold" by James Ashley Morrison published in 2020 about Churchill's error. . There's an interview with Morrison here on YouTube with Mark Blyth, where they talk about the book, and the parallels with Black Wednesday and Brexit. How people think about the economy, shapes their decisions. Rich or poor, our decisions reflect our priorities. Priorities define problems and the solutions we choose to pursue. In this context, John Major's priorities determined his choice of solution, and it wasn't realistic or sustainable. Thatcher was skeptical, but as she had destroyed her political capital, she agreed to it. And that didn't save her, even though she was right to be skeptical. John Major and Norman Lamont were fearful if they didn't join the ERM, the UK economy would enter death spiral, as the ERM was attracting foreign inward investment to the member countries. So it was do or die, but both Major's and Lamont's thinking, they thought Sterling's exchange rate should be high so as to attract some of that investment. They set it too high. They did not understand how the money markets saw the British economy. By setting the exchange right too high, they set themselves up for failure. Buyers and sellers only want to pay the fair price, or a price below that for anything. By setting the price of Sterling in the ERM too high, they provided the opportunity for traders to short it. And every trader that could did so, all over the planet. And fear opened the door. The problem is that Britain’s economic policy was more driven by belief than facts. Thatcherism and it's children were stages in a social and economic experiment, shaped more by ideology than proven fact. And it failed - under Thatcher, Major and all the rest in its purported ability to float all economic boats. They exacerbated economic and social inequalities, and embedded a parasitical financial sector, that has made asset owners very rich, and allowed them over decades to gradually acquire the assets of the middle classes, at the expense of the real economy that could provide security and a decent standard of living. You're a winner right now, but those who will follow you, will be worse off than you. Our priorities has created problems so entrenched, that our state is captured by corporations and businesses, and poverty with deprivation, and cruelty, runs rampant. That's why Divide and Rule as Culture wars define our politics. In all that, Soros is a distraction away from the reality that our own leaders have royally screwed us over to cement their position. Soros did what every trader does. And we are being bought and sold too. Hate is pointless. Thinking differently is required. We need to look to our own priorities and understand the price we are paying to pursue them, and consider if that is what we really want to do. Why? Because the game plan is to disenfranchise over time anyone who isn't asset wealthy. And that means your descendants will be poorer and own nothing if we keep on doing the same things and expecting different results. If we do, we'll discussing in the future how the economy is this and that, and how we're all worse off. That's the price of not thinking differently. Go to Garyseconomics channel here on YouTube, and run through his videos. They will explain much more than this.
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  3. Not really. If she was going down that route she should have dug up the bones of Winston Churchill who made the same mistake with the Gold Standard in the 1920s. Britain did not recover from that mistake until 1931. And was still wobbly when World War II came around. Read "England's Cross of Gold" by James Ashley Morrison, published in 2020. There's an interview by Professor Mark Blyth with Morrison discussing the book. It's quite an enlightening read if you are interested in British Economic History, because it discusses the drivers behind economic thinking and policy. He conclusion includes a discussion of Brexit, and how Britain seems to have periodic crises of confidence because of its prevailing ideology and identity that is highly self-referential and tending looking to the past, and projecting that into the future. In short, their thinking is more shaped by "shoulds", than what is. So subjectivity trumps objectivity, even in economics, leading to bad decision making. But that's just being human - we all have that tendency. No-one is immune from folly. Just look at the world we live in right now. But we must remember our weaknesses as well as our strengths, and have enough humility to check our assumptions, before making decisions. Something that our leaders need to accept.
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