Wednesday, March 12, 2014

George Soros must be senile or coming down with Alzheimer's because he forgot how he broke the Bank of England

Soros must be getting senile or he has Alzhemer's or something because he's clearly forgotten how he nearly "broke the Bank of England."

He is commenting here on how, if Scotland were to break away from Britain, it would be a bad idea to have its own currency because the currency would be vulnerable to attack.

Too bad the total opposite is true.

A free-floating, non-convertible Scottish currency might be vulnerable to speculative attack, but it wouldn't get very far because it would have ZERO power to destabilize Scotland's economy. The country's monetary and fiscal policy would be totally unaffected by changes in the exchange rate and therefore, speculators could push and push and push, but they'd be pushing against who? Against themselves, that's who. That's becaue the central bank or Treasury would not be forced to take the other side of that trade in order to defend some arbitrary exchange rate. So the spec attack could hardly last very long.

Believe me, I know. I spent years as a floor trader. When us guys (speculators) on the floor wanted to push the  market around it was always far more effective if we knew there were outsiders who were on the other side of that trade and vulnerable to margin calls or stops or whatever. If we just sold (or bought) against each other, the move would go nowhere fast.

Soros made a billion dollars by betting that England would pull out of the ERM in 1992. Why? Because the Bank of England was taking the other side of his and other speculators' sales. Eventually, the BOE could not defend the exchange rate anymore and it pulled out causing a HUGE readjustment in the pound. Soros covered his shorts when that happened and the rest is history.

He seems to have forgotten all this.

Seriously, does he not see the pitfalls of borrowing in someone else's currency? George...look at the countries in the Eurozone...hello??? Now look at Japan or the U.S. or Britain. See any difference?

George is lost, but the media and probably Scottish proponents of independence will follow his advice for sure. That's bad news for the Scots.

8 comments:

NeilW said...

"Because the Bank of England was taking the other side of his and other speculators' sales. Eventually, the BOE could not defend the exchange rate anymore and it pulled out causing a HUGE readjustment in the pound. "

And of course the player that could keep going until the speculators ran out of money had decided to stay firmly on the fence. This only happened because the Bundesbank refused to defend the peg that they had agreed to.

Central Banks can only keep their currency down and other currencies up.



mike norman said...

Yes!

Matt Franko said...

sounds like he needs some new economic thinking.... oh... wait....

Unknown said...

@Mike Norman,

How do you tell when a trader is stupid or just being deceitful? Maybe Soros is looking for another payday by dispensing bad advice?

mike norman said...

And how would he play that right now?

Ryan Harris said...

If New Zealand with a whopping 4.5 million people can have their own currency, surely Scotland can too! Iceland with 250,000 made it work until they blew up their banking sector

Unknown said...

@Mike Norman,

No idea. To be honest I'm not that bright, so I assume he sees more than I do.

Anonymous said...

I doubt Soros has forgotten anything whatsoever. He's a bankster for pete's sake. Of course he'd the Scots not to be sovereign. He's also one of the knaves who funded NGO's in the Ukraine which created the mess we're seeing. Subversive SOB.