Why is it that taking advantage of loopholes and incompetent bureaucracy to take things from innocent people is monstrous if you do it on a small scale, but heroic on a national scale?
Don't you think there's plenty of blame for everybody? If I leave my keys in the ignition with the window down and my car gets stolen, it's my own fault for being careless, but that doesn't mean the thief is innocent.
There was neither a thief nor a theft. The equivalent would be if you declared you would attempt to fix the price of all Camrys. You buy a huge number of them to prop up the price. Some third party thinks this is stupid, borrows some Camrys and sells them for dollars. Eventually you run out of money and the price falls. There is no theft- it was simply a bad position for you to take in the first place.
Baring any ethics, should governments be immune from loses in open markets? Who would participate?
An elite few wealthy politicians decided how millions of people's money would act in the global economy. They made a bad call, obviously. But Soros and company weren't forced to "go for the jugular." They could have effectively "taught the British government a lesson" by making a few hundred million dollars and leaving the currency in tact, rather than completely decimating it. It's just greed. And the fact that so few people can see that is alarming.
But see, a few hundred million would not have taught them any lesson. They would have accepted that as the price of maintaining the pound in the range that the ERM said it needed to be in, and continued to do so. It was only when the losses became unacceptable that the politicians stopped acting foolishly.
I see a lot of comments like this, presumably from UK citizens, and it looks like 99% income tax never taught you something. Alarmingly socialist world views for someone in the middle of Planet's biggest bank.
I remember hearing a quote from someone who used to work at a fairly high level in the UK Civil Service - they described someone saying "Incompetence shouldn't be a barrier to a chap having a good career" - and it wasn't a joke.
