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

https://historyofyesterday.com/the-day-george-soros-broke-the-bank-of-england-to-make-1-1b-4834df0605d1?gi=9e38fbcf4733

by hutrdvnj • 4 years ago

151 167 4 years ago

sam5372• 4 years ago

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.

csdvrx• 4 years ago

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.

whynotminot• 4 years ago

Exactly. It would be great to live in a world without shit-heads, but shit-heads exist and so systems shouldn't be designed for benign actors only.

boxed• 4 years ago

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.

john567• 4 years ago

Even if I leave my front door unlocked it's not your prerogative to empty my house. The locked door is there to suggest that it's a immensely stupid idea. I cannot begin to imagine the self entitled bull, someone peddles to themselves, to justify corruption and greed at this level.

admax88qqq3• 4 years ago

I can only be exploited by people with massive resources. There's not that many people or companies in existence. It's not the same as a software bug that can be exploited by any random hacker

Lots of society still relies on people behaing well overall with the few outliers being ostracized or outlawed when they don't.

fmvab2• 4 years ago

“If it hadn’t been exploited by this person, someone else would have”

I’ve only ever heard this line of reasoning used to justify something unethical.

And in the case of software, we don’t admire the black-hat hackers that take advantage of exploits, do we? In fact, in that case it’s not even legal…

unmole8• 4 years ago

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

mananaysiempre• 4 years ago

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.)

hn_throwaway_99• 4 years ago

Is that what actually happened in this case, though? (Not a rhetorical question, I honestly don't know).

I ask because the decision to short the pound was a coordinated attack among many powerful financial institutions. There is a reason collusion in other economic areas is illegal, precisely because it allows a "mispricing" to occur compared to what would happen if their were arms-length, fair competition.

Again, I have no idea if this is a valid criticism of Soros' trade, but the part of the article about him convincing other investors to go along with trade reminded me in a way of the agreement of SV companies not to poach each other's talent, which HN loves to decry as illegal collusion to depress wages.

parasense• 4 years ago

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?

taylorius• 4 years ago

The Bank of England did what it was told - the Conservative Government's were intent on maintaining Sterling within the European Exchange Rate Mechanism currency band (a precursor step to harmonizing currencies into what would become the Euro). This was what allowed Soros to endlessly short the pound.

cloutchaser• 4 years ago

As much as I disagree with Soros on a lot of things, betting on a government being unable to manipulate it's currency forever, and succeeding on that bet is the government's fault, not Soros'.

ortusdux• 4 years ago

A bet is a tax on bullshit.

jollybean• 4 years ago

It's 100% Soros's fault and he probably should have been jailed for it.

A nation was pursuing an economic policy towards harmonising their economy with that of another - a very nuanced process. Like two ships lining up so that one could supply the other.

That it makes an economy possibly more vulnerable to external issues (like a giant wave) is true, but it's a necessary condition that ostensibly has future benefits of economic alignment (i.e. ships being resupplied worth some risk).

Soros is a thief, a pirate, like any other - he came a long and created enormous risk, extracted billions into his fat pocket which would otherwise be in public coffers, and didn't create a dime in value for anyone, it's a zero sum game in which he ran off with riches learning everyone else poorer. It's cockroach capitalism of the worst kind.

nabla9• 4 years ago

Soros did not "break" something that was fine if left untouched. He realized that exchange rate was overvalued and acted on it. Resulted devaluation of GBP made British labour more competitive overnight and fixed the imbalance. Other European countries (like Finland) had similar problems at the same and were forced eventually to devalue without any coordinated attack.

When economies do not form an optimal currency area, tying currencies together with fixed rate creates all kinds of problems. Having floating exchange rate where central bank only "leans" to reduce volatility is usually the best course of action.

Eurozone is constantly battling against internal imbalances. Moving towards common fiscal policy is one way to fix them.

lupire8• 4 years ago

Is the US an optimal currency area?

throwawaycities• 4 years ago

The lives affected are not even spared an afterthought.

Such a simple, beautiful and powerful sentence. For some reason I instinctually read it in Morgan Freeman’s voice.

sam5372• 4 years ago

Thank you.

pavlov• 4 years ago

It's not like a currency devaluation affects everyone equally, or even uniformly negatively.

If you were a British factory worker, it might have saved your job because British exports became more competitive.

If you were a middle class office worker, it probably made life more inconvenient because imported goods became more expensive, and that Spanish vacation you had been planning might now be out of reach.

If you were a member of the upper class, your wealth was probably already well hedged against GBP risk by using offshore currency accounts, foreign stock investments, etc.

mannerheim2• 4 years ago

I've heard the same kind of blame leveled at the characters of the Big Short. But just as they didn't make banks give out bad loans, Soros didn't make the Bank of England put an unsustainable currency peg in place.

Jyaif• 4 years ago

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?

astoor• 4 years ago

He's the bad guy of the story because he's a billionaire who made a $1.1Gb at the expense of the ordinary people living in the UK at the time. He forced mortgage rates, for example, to shoot up to 15%, with crippling monthly payments for a large chunk of the population.

Note that the article author is a cryptocurrency cultist, so he'll be all in favour of unscrupulous people enriching themselves at the expense of others irrespective of the negative effects this might have on society or the environment or whatever.

mhh__2• 4 years ago

Wouldn't Soros argue that all he did was accelerate their leaving of an already increasingly strained ERM?

The ministers in charge didn't want to be in the ERM, it was all Major.

ceejayoz• 4 years ago

He forced mortgage rates, for example, to shoot up to 15%, with crippling monthly payments for a large chunk of the population.

Does British monetary policy not get some blame, here?

It was a sudden shock because they were putting their foot on the scale for quite some time.

jen205• 4 years ago

He forced mortgage rates, for example, to shoot up to 15%, with crippling monthly payments for a large chunk of the population.

While this may be true, it is entirely the fault of the dumb UK mortgage market that does not provide for fixed-rate mortgages for the full term of the loan. In the US, 30 year fixed rates are the norm. In the UK you’re lucky to get 5 years fixed.

gadders4• 4 years ago

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

mikeyouse5• 4 years ago

Such as?

kmeisthax• 4 years ago

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

horsestaple• 4 years ago

He didn't do it to 'fix a disequilibrium', he ruthlessly exploited an opportunity for personal gain at the expense of an entire country. You can argue about the positive long term consequences, or the responsibility of the people that created the situation, but he is most definitely 'a' bad guy.

colinmhayes4• 4 years ago

Absolutely not. In fact, I'd say Soros is a hero in this story. It was not ending the peg that cost the british people, but creating it. The bank of england was throwing away billions of dollars trying to sustain a peg that was never sustainable. Soros' actions convinced the bank to give up and stop wasting the peoples money.

AlexandrB• 4 years ago

I think there's a knee-jerk reaction to short-sellers or actions like this because they cause loss of value for a mass of people. I, frankly, don't understand it. Those ultimately responsible are the entities that pumped up a bubble in the first place. Shooting the messenger who is effectively saying "this valuation is unreasonable" is counterproductive. It's like blaming the guy who brings a scam to your attention instead of the scammer.

And to be clear, I'm not saying that short-selling is inherently virtuous. It's a speculative activity like any other in our financial system. But it doesn't make sense that speculation (or even market manipulation) which increases an asset's value is often seen as ok, while the opposite is not.

Edit: Here's a good example - the current Canadian Real Estate Bubble[1]. I wish someone would pop this thing. It's already so big that it's going to hurt a lot of people. The government seems unwilling to do much to restrain it, especially since the pandemic, and as it gets bigger the potential fallout only increases. But I'm willing to bet that if some singular investor/regulator triggers an unwinding they will be blamed for all the consequences. Not the 20 years of policies and decisions that led to the bubble getting this large in the first place.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_property_bubble

helen___keller3• 4 years ago

On a related note, I wonder why glorified investors like Michael Burry aren’t instead demonized for contributing to, and profiting from, the near collapse of the American economy in 2008 (obviously it’s not Burry’s fault that banks gave out shit mortgages, nor is it Soros’ fault that the pound sterling was overvalued. They both took large positions to profit off these events as economies crashed)

falcolas3• 4 years ago

By causing a recession? Money in the banking system isn't owned by the banks, it comes from the general public.

unmole8• 4 years ago

The UK was already in recession by time. Soros most definitely did not cause it. The British economy rebounded sharply afterwards, helped at least in part by the fact that British labour was suddenly more price competitive.

JumpCrisscross2• 4 years ago

How is he the bad guy in this story?

He’s narratively identifiable. Soros didn’t individually break the BoE. Lots of people were in on the trade. But he did so massively, relative to his personal wealth and to the market, and publicly.

So he gets pinned. Had he not traded the peg would have still broken. We’d just discuss it like we do the Asian or Russian Financial Crises [1][2], which happened five years later. Unrealistic pegs that suffered runs. Not a man “breaking” a Western central bank.

[1] https://www.britannica.com/event/Asian-financial-crisis

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Russian_financial_crisi...

thrwyoilarticle• 4 years ago

In part because right wing media don't want to blame John Major & left wing media don't want to support a billionaire.

timthorn• 4 years ago

I don't think right wing media hold a particular candle for John Major.

jddil3• 4 years ago

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.

not2b3• 4 years ago

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.

epakai• 4 years ago

Russia doesn't like him because he has been active in encouraging Ukraine's adhesion to the West. The amount of Soros Bad narrative since then (2015) has increased a lot.

kasperni• 4 years ago

In 1997, the UK Treasury estimated the cost of Black Wednesday at £3.14 billion, which was revised to £3.3 billion in 2005 [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Wednesday#:~:text=In%201...).

parenthesis• 4 years ago

No mention of Stanley Druckenmiller. See lines 482 - 544 in a speech given by Druckenmiller

https://gist.github.com/bluechoochoo/a034da52c64ac6fcb637

where he talks about his and Soros' respective roles in the infamous trade.

blibble2• 4 years ago

if this hadn't happened then the UK would have joined the euro

brexit under the euro would have been all but impossible

I wonder if Soros regrets "breaking the bank", especially given he was a huge remain supporter (donating vast amounts to the campaign)

DrBazza• 4 years ago

if this hadn't happened then the UK would have joined the euro

Interesting. Any links?

blibble2• 4 years ago

that's what ERM1 was, fixing your exchange rate against the "European Currency Unit"

and 1 ECU became 1 euro on 1 January 1999

now that the euro exists: joining ERM (version 2) is phase 1 of joining the euro

makomk2• 4 years ago

Yeah, if not for this there's a good chance the UK would be part of the Euro and much more closely tied to the EU. I doubt this would've worked out well overall for the country though; there were other European countries which had similar issues maintaining their exchange rate and the underlying economic mismatches continued to cause economic crises once they joined the Euro.

bitshiftfaced• 4 years ago

Short sellers don't strike me as the type who regret doing something that made them a billion dollars.

TMWNN3• 4 years ago

if this hadn't happened then the UK would have joined the euro
brexit under the euro would have been all but impossible

Not necessarily. The Guardian speculated in 2013 (<http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2013/jun/...>) that if Britain had joined the Euro:

* The mid-2000s British housing bubble, and its collapse in 2007, would have been even bigger.

* Britain would have had to ask the IMF, ECB, and EU for loans.

* The Tories would in 2010 have promised a referendum to leave the Euro and won a majority. Labour would have won fewer than 100 seats, and UKIP would have "made spectacular gains".

* The anti-Euro side would have won the referendum, and the currency would have collapsed.

* "after a deep and painful recession economic recovery began".

* "Britain would have destroyed the euro on departure, and would now be on the point of leaving the EU altogether. The idea that Farage might be the next prime minister would be quite credible."

throwawayp0rn• 4 years ago

Wasn't technically the LPs who each made a fraction of that 1.1B while Soros and Druck got the 5 and 20 or whatever fees they charged them?

boringg• 4 years ago

True but the story doesn't read as well when you put it that way.

admax88qqq3• 4 years ago

If I have to read "massive speculative attack" one more time... Almost every paragraph ends with this, and it takes 5 paragraphs just to start explaining what the attack was and how it worked.

This wouldn't pass high school English.

criddell• 4 years ago

Your high school didn't grade essays based on engagement? /s

admax88qqq3• 4 years ago

lol fair point

rvba4• 4 years ago

Probably helps with SEO.

xenocratus• 4 years ago

This one might be better: https://priceonomics.com/the-trade-of-the-century-when-georg...

codeulike• 4 years ago

I remember listening to the news on the radio that day, the government changed the interest rate twice, from 10% to 12% at about 11am and then a couple of hours later up to 15%

motohagiography3• 4 years ago

The myth is about Soros, but it was a network of largely U.S. investment banks that co-ordinated and piled on to raid the BoE. Consider that the GameStonks craze where people just really, really liked the stock got threatened with charges of market manipulation, almost took out Robinhood, with contagion exposure to Citadel with system wide risk, and caused back door intervention by Fed authorities and even the Whitehouse - Soros' payday is evidence for Balzac's adage that behind every great fortune lies a great crime. I have no doubt what he did would be absolutely criminal today.

He went on to create the Open Society Foundations, which supported and co-ordinated aspects of the (then) progressive anti-globalization movement of the 90s I was involved in. At the time the movement was mostly anti-capitalist, uniting labor and civil society against (neo-liberal) trade agreements designed to exploit the poverty and authoritarianism of other countries and to hollow out western economies by exporting manufacturing jobs, and against exploitative policies by the IMF, who used loans to indebt and subordinate elected governments and force privatization and sale of their infrastructure to transnational corps and roll back environmental protection. (see, confessions of an economic hitman, nologo, etc.) Ostensibly noble causes.

It almost seemed like a billionaire's noblesse oblige. Soros was the "good capitalist." The movements themselves failed after 9/11, and Occupy was a whimper in comparison to the battles of Seattle, Quebec City, Turin, and others. The US rust belt was exported destroyed in the 90's and 2000s, laying the ground for the populist revolt that created 2015 election result. However, his OSF foundations and network of NGOs flourished, installing progressive activists from the era in colleges and political parties, and other key institutions.

Trouble is, these weren't working class labor organizers and anarcho-anti-capitalists, they were technocrats, equipped with an ideology whose specific endgame is central economic co-ordination, and it was nominally anti-capitalist in the sense that it is against the individualistic cultural aspects of smallholders and the autonomy and values small business provides, and that it uses critical theory as a tool to dissolve the bonds of societies. This is the kernel of truth beneath the layers of hallucinatory conspiracy theory.

To me, Soros is just a visionary criminal who learned about totalitarianism from the inside during his youth, and has funded his own vision of that technocratic system. That's not a conspiracy theory, that's just what any billionaire criminal with a will to power seeking to build a empire would do, and imo, he has.

gunfighthacksaw2• 4 years ago

Didn’t Soros study under Karl Popper? I wouldn’t say he learned totalitarianism from the inside, rather he was influenced by a very astute advisor on the nature of societal openness and the associated dynamics.

As far as being supposedly ‘evil’, I don’t see how anyone in his position could not be. Look at the world around us. We are ruled by psychopaths, shysters and ghouls at multiple levels; middle management to heads of state.

I’ve always had a chip on my shoulder about decency, humility and fairness, but the older I get and more money/power I accumulate, I’m starting to see that the monsters of the world will only be beaten by a bigger monster. So if I set out to right the wrongs I see, I too would necessarily need to become monstrous.

motohagiography3• 4 years ago

To be monsterous and justified, what a triumph of moral expedience. Soros experienced WWII as a teenager in Hungary(?) where growing up he saw the rise of the movements that would become NSDAP and Stalinsim, respectively. My view is that the most powerful thing he has ever experienced was that evil, but in seeing the power of them, he understood what was possible, and his intent is to use them for "good." Trouble is, you need the power to do good, but once you have the power, why do you need to be good?

I think what we now recite as Popper's paraphrase is just a cheap slogan for organizing banal minds, and not a model for reflection. My objection isn't to Popper and so-called open socieites, it's to the belief that the "problem," is the lack of a sophisticated plan with a system guided by ideology to run them in the first place. It's a technocratic presumption, that if we just come up with a system, we can impose it on reality and human desire, and we will "fix the problem."

What Popper has been used for (regardless of what he may have written), and the viral idea that critical theorists today have made that people fundamentally want was this very justification for their own monsterousness. This is the liberation they're offering. When you revisit the idea of being a victim or being oppressed as just an infinite will to power, moralized by an ideology designed to dissolve truth and inconvenient perceptions of reality, it's pretty obvious that the OSF and its appendant bodies in the WEF and other networks are just recycled totalitarian junk from a new generation of demagogues.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe a bunch of billionaires and bureaucrats have had Damascene conversions and are really just self sacrificing martyrs and saints.

lupire8• 4 years ago

It's a bit silly to call someone "totalitarianist" when his whole career and wealth is from betting against bad governments and winning.

But if you equate "wealthy" with "totalitarian", you are too far gone to debate with.

rvba4• 4 years ago

Even better, Soros managed to convince other investors and investment banks (JP Morgan, Bank of America, Jones Investment, …) that the pound sterling would collapse in the event of a massive and coordinated attack.

I wonder how this wouod be judged with current "insider trading" laws, but since it is a foreign country (even if ally) then probably nothing would be done.

Also the article doesnt seem to mention that Bank of England could stop their losses and stop trying to save the pound.

I have a feeling that actions of central banks are poorly discussed - in many ways those banks seem to be a source of recession (UK, Japan) or method of transfer of wealth to the rich (quantitative easing... seriously it is just pure evil).

not2b3• 4 years ago

But Soros and his allies were not using confidential information; they were not insiders. I am not a fan of this kind of thing at all, but insider trading laws aren't relevant.

As for your last point, yes, if the Bank of England had surrendered earlier they would have lost far less money and Soros and his allies would have made far less profit.

rvba4• 4 years ago

Talking with a group of investors behind closed doors to agree and execute a strategy seems like a very obvious market manipulation.

helen___keller3• 4 years ago

I have a feeling that actions of central banks are poorly discussed

You and I have very different definition of “poorly discussed”.

rvba4• 4 years ago

Youtube videos with yellow comments dont count as great sources for me.

We still barely have any sources about what happened in Japan.

bidirectional3• 4 years ago

How is Soros an insider on British government policy?

mc32• 4 years ago

If only every target had the wherewithal of the Porsche/Piech family which instead broke its shorters the world would be slightly a fairer place.

jddil3• 4 years ago

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 it goes. (please prove me wrong)

fallingfrog• 4 years ago

I agree, I don't think I'd call Soros a leftist- a liberal, maybe. But leftist is wrong- he's a wealthy capitalist, and leftist thought generally involves anticapitalist views. In fact leftists generally view center liberals as their most effective enemies.

But yeah the right always tries to portray him as leftist to try to connect him with "antifa" as part of antisemitic conspiracy theories.

regularfry• 4 years ago

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.

lupire8• 4 years ago

The confusion in this thread is that some people think "breaking the bank" is an insult to the breaker, because the bank is the "good guy".

It's a bit bizarre.

shrubble• 4 years ago

"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)

IAmEveryone• 4 years ago

Wikipedia: Tivadar [his father] saved not only his immediate family but also many other Hungarian Jews, and Soros later wrote that 1944 had been "the happiest [year] of his life," for it had given him the opportunity to witness his father's heroism.[

Stop lying.

mikeyouse5• 4 years ago

The idea that Soros, who was a 13-year old Hungarian Jew pretending to be christian as to not be murdered by the Nazis, somehow was sympathetic to the nazis is one of the laziest attempts at smearing someone I can remember.

MerelyMortal2• 4 years ago

I had thought poorly of George Soros based on other people's words, before reading all of the comments written thus far in this thread. Watching the video you linked, cemented my notion that Goeorge Soros is being treated as a scapegoat. Thank you for sharing the video, as I had never actually listened to him speak before.

In that video, he seems like a logical and emotional person who can keep emotions in their proper perspective. Everything is nuanced, and he can navigate it. It looks like he has a high emotional IQ and intelligence IQ.

Regarding the last segment of the video that contains an audio clip, it talks about personal development. Personal development can happen in terrible enviornments like the German occupation and Nazi confescation of Jewish assets. He was glad that he developed as opposed to not developing.

It's a little odd that he called it a happy time though, and I am disappointed that he does not believe in God, but that doesn't mean he should be made a scapegoat for unwinding of financial problems started by others.

lupire8• 4 years ago

He explicitly didn't say he was happy he developed. He said he was happy, and that happiness was possible because he was solipsistic and concerned only for his own position.

And how can you congratulate someone for being logical, high IQ/EQ while being disappointed that they don't believe in God, which is an illogical idea and emotional crutch?

tim333• 4 years ago

An interesting and amusing take on it from Gyles Brandreth who was in the room on the UK government side of this https://youtu.be/dwRfVtdqfWY?t=85

neves• 4 years ago

In Brazil the alt-right calls Soros a lefist billionare that finances communism around the world. Does this craziness exist in other places of the world?

Qub3d• 4 years ago

George Soros conspiracy theories have been a dogwhistle for antisemitism used in right-leaning politics in the United States for decades.

Jtsummers• 4 years ago

Yes. It's a popular right-wing conspiracy theory here in the US, too. I've also had to disabuse several people of the notion that he was a Nazi.

lamp987• 4 years ago

He does finance political NGOs around the world, yes. Communism, definitely not.

boredumb• 4 years ago

England, Thailand, Malaysia....

screenbreakout• 4 years ago

Is there any chance someone could bet on the Swiss franc being undervalued to the extent it's central bank would have to accept a 1/1 parity with the euro... are there other similar cases of ("collusion") of individual entities that have outbet government policies to this or further extent?

omoikane• 4 years ago

Related: "When George Soros Broke the British Pound (2014)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21454383

haspoken• 4 years ago

https://archive.is/cI2L2

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

Related Stories