The Bank of England's Failure to Intervene in the Exchange Rate Mechanism

Soros by no means acted alone in making his bet and can't be blamed for what eventually happened. While he had placed a huge multi-billion dollar trade the daily turnover in foreign exchange markets in the early 1990s was frequently over a trillion dollars per day. The estimated cost to the British taxpayer for the failed intervention was between three and four billion pounds. Once it was all over Britain's interest rate went back to ten percent.