The Man who Broke the Bank of England

      I like my hair a specific way. The top has to be able to be flown to the right, the sides have to be a only a bit shorter, and my sideburns need to be clear cut. This isn't untrue of other guys, a lot of boys I know need their hair to be a specific way, or order is lost. But what also isn't untrue about us is that when we go to the barber, they sometimes mess it up. They might not trim the top enough, cut the sides to short, or make really high sideburns. But when they do, no matter how disordered it causes them to be, they act like it's good. They either don't like having to confront the barber, or see no point to it. No matter if its a bad barber, and they don't know how to cut hair right at all, you still wouldn't dare confront them. But what if the ordeal was bigger than that? Bigger than just person, what if it was an entire entity? What if you were up against an entire country? Your own country?
     After World War 2 Europe wanted to unify their countries through a currency exchange. But this came with a downfall, to stop depreciation countries had to follow what the others did, and judging on the varying personalities of country's this could have been, and proved to be a treacherous downfall. Inflation was high in Germany, due to their raising debts so they raised their prime rate, with others following them. This was especially dangerous for England because their pound was already way overvalued at that point, but they were forced to raise it. This was referred, to as "Keeping up with the Joneses", trying to keep up financially and socially with neighboring countries. Faking anything to keep up with your neighbors is never a good idea, especially if you're a country.
     George Soros was heading the Quantum Fund at that point, focusing on macroeconomic trends, so at this point he already had a hefty sum under his belt. He saw that England was under a massive amount of pressure. They only had two options, leave the currency clique they had only just joined, or make a huge devaluation of their own currency, throwing off their own country, and all other country they contracted with out of balance. To add to this the British budget was already in a bad state, suffering from a massive global recession and facing a peak in unemployment rates. To top it all off inflation was high, productivity was low, and exports were uncompetitive; no one believed the government was capable of fixing any of these atrocities. This was a cascading failure, with all the dominoes stacked in a neat row. All it needed was someone to give it a little tap.
     Seizing the opportunity, Soros shorted the stock. All this means is that he used the money he had to sell the stock when it was high, then using those profits to buy even more stocks as the price goes lower and repeating that, backing it up with more money, until he made humongous profits. So if you sold something for $10 and it became $9 and you bought it, then you would get $1 increase. Now if the prices skyrocketed to $100 then you would get into huge debt, so if you short, you need to be absolutely sure you're right, or else you're screwed. So in terms of British currency, if the pound devalues you make money, but if it appreciates?
      Therein lies the reason why George Soros is so acclaimed he is today. If it devalued then it would him billions but it had no chance of raising in value. In fact, it was only holding up by a thin string the government had thrown out in a desperate attempt to keep it just afloat. It was like a game show minus the bowl of piranhas in door 3, if it stayed the same, George would only lose a bit in interest, but if it lowered, as it inevitably would, he would get billions in profit. So what happened? Well that single day was immortalized in history as "Black Wednesday" and George Soros was named "The Man who Broke the Bank of England."
     So really, he didn't stop the bad barber by taking away his license or what not. The barber himself took away his own license, George Soros just dialed up the authorities for him.