Supergnome
I AM TAKING out a short position in George Soros. To me, he looks overbought and overdone. I do not grudge him his profit from selling sterling on Black Wednesday — even the Treasury now admits that the collapse of its policy is what has got the economy going — but it has made him out to be a Supergnome, who by his dealings has the power to raise a cur- rency or bring it down. Some loudmouth in Washington wants Mr Soros investigated, to see if Mr Soros has been rigging the for- eign exchanges. I can acquit him. A billion- dollar deal could scarcely rig a market which turns over $1,000 billion on an ordi- nary day — and Black Wednesday was not that. (I asked a banker on the receiving end what it was like. `Rorke's Drift,' he said.) The people who seriously tried to rig the markets were the central bankers, and much good it did them. Now, though, the Supergnome is constantly pronouncing on the future of the mark or the franc, and dealers find that their rumours spread bet- ter if they put his name in front of them. Such pronouncements and rumours can be self-fulfilling, for a while. Then the market- place finds a new idol. Robert Maxwell put it about that he had moved into cash before Wall Street's Black Monday.
Previous page
