Hacker News Reader

Comment by truantbuick | Hacker News Reader

I don't know that much about finance, so can somebody explain to me why I never hear anybody censuring Soros over this? I only hear congratulations for bamboozling the incompetent British government.

He made billions at the expense of an entire country.

I'm not saying it was illegal, and maybe people like Soros are needed to help deter governments from artificially manipulating their currency like the British did. However, when it comes down to it, he benefited by executing a bet meant to enrich himself, compound the problems of the pound, and diminish the wealth of a nation. It seems like a plainly immoral thing to me.

View on HN

Would it have been better if the British treasury continued to buy pounds for months (or years) before finally realizing they couldn't prop up the sterling? You could argue that Soros making such a significant bet all at once forced the government to concede earlier than it would have otherwise, and saved them money. He did what speculators do best -- price discovery.

At worst Soros did Britain a favor. They should send him a thank you card. He helped expedite and lessen what otherwise would have been an even bigger crash had the Bank of England been able to continue their guaranteed-to-fail scheme for a longer period of time.

He played the game according to the rules. You can't fault a winner when he wins on a even playing field.

In fact, Soros won on a playing field tilted against him. He went up against a sovereign country with taxing power, and won.

Using these kind of game metaphors just shallowly rationalizes something of far more importance, IMO. Legal or not, a country was worse off because of his direct and deliberate actions.

> Legal or not, a country was worse off because of his direct and deliberate actions.

You're talking about the Chancellor of the Exchequer who decided it was rational to keep pouring money into the other side of the trade Soros was making, I hope.

"a country was worse off because of his direct and deliberate actions"

The country was worse off because its fiscal policy, determined via politics, amounted to a completely untenable long term position. An epic disaster was the only possible conclusion.

Well I'm glad someone made the entire country pay for the Chancellor of the Exchequer's decisions.

Didn't you, I don't know, elect them? Who is there to blame?

No, the country was worse off because of its government's decision to prop up the currency in an unsustainable way. Soros just happened to be the instrument by which the market finally clobbered England over the head. It could have been some other speculator or group of speculators, and it could have played out over a longer time period (possibly at even greater loss to the British public), but it would have happened sooner or later.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com