Donald Trump Presidency-Day One

[broncofan]

There are probably people on this forum who know more about finance than I do, but isn't it possible that his bet was successful because he recognized weakness in the pound rather than that he created it by shorting it?

I don't think Soros has done anything that qualifies him as evil but I am curious about this strictly as a finance question if anyone knows. To what extent did Soros cause the pound to crash by betting against it and to what extent did he simply predict it would crash and bet against it? Or is it some combination of both, namely that the position he took was based on a prediction but also had an effect.

[buttslinger]

....I am curious to what extent the hard right, the people that Roseanne has been channeling and retweeting for several years, are aware of the fact that they're lying. To what extent are they partially aware and have just decided that they can be dishonest and disgusting if they are surrounded by enough like-minded people.

The elephant in the room is not even the republican party, they seem to have surrendered to him. The classic Republican Suit has been replaced by the Rush Limbaugh Johnny Bravo suit, Trump fit the suit. It would have to be a comic book character. Trump may get an Academy Award along with his Nobel Prize.
Here's the thing: there's sixty million of them. ....getting rid of Trump will be the easy part. The first page of his income taxes probably is good for ten years.......no, the hard part would be Mike Pence inheriting the worst step child one could ever image: The Trump Army.

[Stavros]

Soros is an evil man. Look how he smashed the working people of England by making over a billion in a day.

George Soros was doing what capitalists do, in his case buying and selling currency. The opportunity to make a lot of money on a bet was provided to him by the incompetence of the Conservative Govt in its management of the country's financial system. Joining the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) -a precursor to the Euro- in the manner in which it did and at the rate relative to the Deutschmark was the root of the problem, mostly due to the chronic problems of low productivity in the UK economy and the country's interest rate confusion, two issues we still face today. I suppose one could accuse the Germans of sabotage, but they looked at the figures and it was clear that Sterling was weak, Soros listened to what the Germans had to say, and concluded it was only a matter of time before the currency was either devalued by the Treasury or forced out of the ERM, and upped his stake from a billion $ to over $10 billion. And don't forget that on the day interest rates were going up by the hour and the Bank of England under Govt instructions spent £27 billion trying to save a currency that couldn't be saved. I remember it well because I had a loan at the time that was set at 2% over the base rate which meant I ended up paying 17% on the loan, others such as home-owners in the early stage of their mortgage lost their homes as the cost rose beyond their means, and so on.

So don't blame George Soros, if anyone is to blame it is the Conservative Party and its rank, incompetent management of the economy.

There is a detailed analysis of the way in which Soros expertly played the market here-
https://priceonomics.com/the-trade-o...e-soros-broke/

[Stavros]

One thing, that promotes this anger is conservative talk radio. In driving, the major entertainment, is listening the radio, if you don't not have your own music media. Their main thrust, in my book, is to feed resentment. Rush Limbaugh, is the most widely known, however that several others, such as Glenn Beck, etc. I happened to have listened to a smaller market one named Bill Cunningham, only because he comes on after the games of our major sport team..

I don't know who Cunningham is and only know the other two by their reputations, but I understand the point you are making. At root, though, I think resentment is a more destructive force than anger because one boils up and explodes and then dies down, but resentment gnaws away at the mind and thus can motivate people to plan their resolution, convincing them that what they destroy will leave something better behind or the conditions for improvement. I don't agree with the idea that these people have, that the America they used to know and love has been 'taken away' from them through liberal social policy, immigration, the loss of wars overseas -something they don't like to talk about in fact but which is part of the deeper despondency they feel over a 'declining' or a 'broken' America, but I think it does reflect the mentality of a certain group of White Americans who also cannot reconcile themselves to the fact that they are the architects of what they claim has gone wrong, just as capitalism as practiced in the Reagan era and since has led to the off-shoring of jobs they now complain is a 'trade war' with China they are losing, as if the Chines had held a gun to the USA's head and said: give is your manufacturing jobs or we will shoot!

[filghy2]

Soros is an evil man. Look how he smashed the working people of England by making over a billion in a day.

That is complete rubbish which reveals your hidden agenda. Soros made his money at the expense of the Bank of England, which was trying to prop up the currency at the government's behest. Being forced out of the ERM was arguably good for the UK economy because it allowed the currency and interest rates to fall at a time when the economy was weak.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Wednesday

[filghy2]

I don't think Soros has done anything that qualifies him as evil but I am curious about this strictly as a finance question if anyone knows. To what extent did Soros cause the pound to crash by betting against it and to what extent did he simply predict it would crash and bet against it? Or is it some combination of both, namely that the position he took was based on a prediction but also had an effect.

It is a combination of both. The UK's ERM exit is an example of a 'second generation' currency crisis, where speculators attack a currency because they doubt that a government is willing to do whatever it takes to maintain the peg. In this case, speculation may be self-fulfilling; ie the currency peg could have been maintained if speculators had not attacked. However, the underlying source of vulnerability is that governments have conflicting goals. They want to maintain the currency peg but they also worried about the effects on the economy of doing whatever it takes to hold the peg, which normally involves raising interest rates. The UK economy was still recovering from recession in 1992, so Soros made the correct judgement that the government would blink first.

[buttslinger]

As crazy as it seems, I don't see any other outcome except for Trump to start firing people, and pardoning people. Trump's going to fire the policemen, and pardon the criminals. When does this joke end?

[filghy2]

Another bizarre story about Trump's disdain for any kind of legal obligation. There are people in the White House who spend their time taping up his papers because he insists on tearing them up. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/...-system-635164

[bluesoul]

is larry kudlow drunk?

[filghy2]

is larry kudlow drunk?

He probably needed a few stiff ones to get up and say in public things he must know are complete bullshit. What is the terrible thing Trudeau is supposed to have done anyway - saying that he will stand up for Canada's interests against Trump's bullying?

It is true that Canada applies very high tariffs to imported dairy products above specified quotas. http://checkyourfact.com/2018/06/11/...-tariff-dairy/ Most countries have some sectors that are heavily protected and the US is no exception. https://www.businessinsider.com.au/a...f-on-imports-1

Overall, however, tariffs are similarly low across most countries so claims that trade is rigged against the US are nonsense. According to the WTO average tariff rates are 2.4% for the USA, 3.1% for Canada and 3% for the European Union. https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/st...tis_maps_e.htm