[csdvrx]

> 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.

[boxed]

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.

[DeWilde]

In a world where there are people that will hit you with a steel pipe and will not be stopped by the legality of the matter then it is your fault for not putting on the helmet.

But that isn't a good comparison for this case as what he did was not illegal. Unlike hitting people with steel pipes.

[drekk]

I appreciate the honesty and consistency at least of doubling down on blaming the victim.

Our pipe-wielding example will just find another victim without a helmet. You can always find something a victim could have done differently, the only common thread is the perpetrator.

Also legality isn't a proxy for morality. Slavery was illegal. Some societies allowed cannibalism. What Soros did had a human cost and the fact someone else might have done the same financial alchemy had he not doesn't excuse it.

[colinmhayes]

The UK central bank was actively harming their economy with this nonsensical peg. Comparing trading an obviously overvalued currency to hitting someone with a pipe is similarly nonsensical. The government was not the victim here, but the perpetrator of the crime. Soros forced them to stop before the central bank could cause even more damage.

[DeWilde]

I never made a case for legality == morality. Also beware that morality isn't equally defined, what you find moral others will find amoral.

As for the pipe and helmet example. The laws and ways of upholding them are the metaphorical helmet that we put on to protect ourselves against pipe wielders.

The perpetrator will do what it wants to do, we can protect ourselves with laws, law enforcement, education or physical armour. Or do you expect the pipe wielder to stop because they were told what they are doing is bad or amoral?

[admax88qqq]

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.

[JumpCrisscross]

> can only be exploited by people with massive resources

Not true. Unrealistic pegs paired with reams of floating-rate debt always break. See the Asian and Russian Financial Crises [1][2].

We discuss those as financial crises, not a man breaking a central bank, because they (a) don’t have a narratively-convenient antagonist and (b) aren’t Western central banks.

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

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

[whynotminot]

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.

[fmvab]

“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…

[colinmhayes]

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

That doesn't mean it's not true. Soros's actions ending the peg helped the british people, whose government was throwing away billions of pounds trying to sustain the unsustainable peg.

[fmvab]

Perhaps the outcome was better for Britain in the end, but I object to glorifying Soros on the grounds that his intentions were clearly to take money out of the system, and breaking the pound with a coordinated attack just doesn’t seem very ethical.

I also think that when people characterize moves like this as ‘brilliant’ it does a disservice to the word. I think many folks, if they tuned their attention to opportunities like this, had the big name firms in their Rolodex, and had questionable ethics, could have made this move. Maybe I’m missing it, but this seems like a pretty straightforward way to take advantage of the system.

[colinmhayes]

I really don't think intentions matter when contemplating moral questions, outcomes matter. Every economist was saying the peg would be broken, yet the bank of england was committed to throwing away money trying to save it. Every day they continued the british people were worse off. Soros was a hero in this story for being the person who convinced the bank of england to end their fools errand.

[psd1]

That's begging the question. Clearly someone thought that Britain would be better off in the ERM at that rate, and clearly some economists thought the rate could be maintained

[john567]

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.

[Tenoke]

It's not an unlocked door situation and it wasn't illegal. It's more akin to you betting on the wrong horse and being mad at the other guy who bet on the right one for losing your money when it's your fault for gambling instead of doing something else.

[vlovich123]

It wasn’t just a horse bet by my reading of the article. It was more like they noticed that there was an opportunity to hobble a horse if you and your buddies rush the field and that the odds makers were not anticipating this so you bet otherwise.

You can marvel at the technical ingenuity of a heist like this but the ethics are dubious. The strongest counter is that the Bank of England wasn’t paying attention but that’s mildly victim claiming just like it would be if a company fell prey to a novel 0-day software exploit.

[lotsofpulp]

When you go to buy or sell something, do you inform the seller or buyer that they are incorrectly pricing the product/service they are selling?

Do you let your counterparty know that you are willing to pay or sell at a price that is more beneficial to them?

[UnpossibleJim]

They already knew, by my reading. Bankers knew there was a bubble which is why it wasn't just Soros. He convinced quite a few banks and investors to help him in this scheme (and make quite a bit of cash as well) in order to pull it off. From the article:

- George Soros and all the funds and banks that participated in this large-scale attack were then able to repay the loans they had taken out in sterling, but with a devalued pound against the US dollar -

He was just the "ring leader", as it were. To date, no one had been able to coalesce all the necessary players into a single room and get them on the same page before in order to pull off such a thing. He was a proverbial shepherd corralling a bag of cats in order to make this scheme work.

Callous and greedy, sure. Intelligent and legal all the same. Blame the law makers for this one if you don't like the outcome. Their shortsightedness and allowances of quick, speculative, money-making bubbles to prop up fraudulent banking systems had a lot to do with this.