Black Wednesday

Unlike the historical Black Monday, Black Tuesday, and Black Thursday (and the modern-day Black Friday), Black Wednesday happened in the ‘90s, the era of Fresh Prince fashion. On September 16, 1992, one man brought down England’s entire banking system. The British pound was a part of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), but had been depreciating over the last couple of years. The European ERM had the goal of helping keep European currencies up in value. To be a part of this club, each country had to keep its currency high enough.

While the Brits tried to keep the pound’s value up through interest rate adjustments and other means, George Soros (a Hungarian-American investor, among other things) was no match for their strategies to keep the pound stable. Soros had accumulated a large short against the pound, and started selling it off in large chunks. Since the market was then flooded with more pounds, the value of the pound took a plunge. The British government said, “Bloody ‘ell!” and couldn’t keep up.

The next day, Black Wednesday, the Brits said a sad “Cheerio, dawling” to the European ERM, because the pound’s value was too low to stay in the club. FWIW, Soros is also a “philanthropist,” which is a bit ironic seeing that he ruined many Brits’ lives in the early ‘90s while making over $1 billion for himself in the process.