The 16th of September 1992 will go down in infamy as the day intervention failed and the British government lost control. By the end of Black Wednesday, George Soros had made a billion dollars and the UK Treasury, Bank of England had blown through taxpayer money in a manner never before seen.
“We planned to intervene on a scale that would ensure the market knew we were intervening, ” but as the government intervened one trader notes, “it was incredible, you could hear wave after wave of selling being met by resistance from the Bank of England.”