In any case, the information I have doesn't paint the picture the same way you do. Drawing from the same link I posted above [1]:
each country set their currency’s value in Deutschmarks. They agreed to maintain the exchange rate between their currency and the Deutschmark within an acceptable band of plus or minus 6% of the agreed upon rate. ... The British government was obligated to keep the exchange rate within 2.78 DM to 3.13 DM. ... while the people of Great Britain dealt with a recession, the government’s hands were tied; they’d just have to ride it out.
You'll note the word "obligated" there. By 1992, it wasn't their right to decide whether to follow the market or not. They were bound by international agreements to maintain the exchange rate to the Deutschmark.
Soros retorted with a different strategy: “Go for the jugular.”
If Schlesinger’s quote could be used as the catalyst for the pound to devalue, why shouldn’t today be the day it happened? Instead of slowly building up a short position against the sterling, [Soros's] Quantum Fund could short sell sterling on an unprecedented scale today. Doing so would not only help hasten the tumble of the sterling, but also increase the fund’s profit.
It was this decision to “go for the jugular” that netted Soros’s firm over a billion dollars, toppled the Bank of England’s currency regime, and ultimately led to the disgrace of the Prime Minister. It also cost the British taxpayers billions.
...
As Europe slept, Soros borrowed and sold pounds from anyone that he could. The Quantum Fund’s position exceeded $10 billion shorting the pound. Other hedge funds got wind of the the trade and the report from the Bundesbank and started following suit, also borrowing and selling pounds.
By the time London markets opened for business and British treasury officials started their day, tens of billions of pounds had been sold and the the pound was dangerously close to trading below the levels mandated by the ERM.
The Bank of England was about to have a very shitty day.
... At 7:30 PM that night, Lamont held a news conference to announce that Britain would be exiting the ERM and floating its currency on the market. Soros and the speculators won.
So this wasn't some inevitable disaster. Soros largely caused the problem, manipulating the market by shorting 15 Billion GBP. In a market that was already shaky, Soros was the one to kick the animal spirits (to steal a Keynes meme) into action. It was likely that something would have happened, but Soros maximized the damage for his own profit.
Now, in what way are the Kochs literal villains?
[1] http://priceonomics.com/the-trade-of-the-century-when-george...
No he didn't, Soros exposed the problem of pegging a currency to an exchange rate they couldn't hold; a problem created by the Bank of England. You seem to think quoting an article you just read is educating me, it isn't; I'm a trader, Soros billion dollar trade is legendary among traders, I've known about it for years and you're clearly not educated in what he did or what it means. The problem here was the Bank of England pegging the currency, not Soros profiting from their inability to maintain that peg. The bad guy here is the Bank of England, not Soros.
And no, the Koch's are evil because they actively spend enormous amounts of money doing everything they can to destroy the political process and suppress votes, destroy the planet and deny climate change, and just generally prove themselves to be utterly disgusting and repugnant human beings who only care about maintaining their own power. They are the literal personification of the evils of excessive wealth.
Nor are the Koch's by any standard champions of the free market. The Koch's are crony capitalists eager to spend their billions messing with the political process to gain favor and legal protections for their businesses. This isn't championing a free market by any stretch of the imagination.
You won't find Soros doing that shit. Shit you're trying to sell his trading as being bad precisely because you can't find much else to call him bad for despite the fact that his billion dollar trade is in no way him being bad.
It's true that my knowledge of trading is from my personal experience in my own investments.
However, you're exhibiting precisely the same kind of blinders about the Kochs. It's clear that you don't understand their political positions, or exactly what they've done, you're just jumping on the partisan bandwagon.
Whatever lets you sleep at night bud. Couldn't be that I actually dislike them, oh no, it must be because I'm partisan or I don't understand them.