'Go for the Jugular'

Lamont's plea to the prime minister had succeeded this time, and the announcement of the dramatic rate hike had been set for 11 AM. A few minutes before the appointed hour, Lamont walked over to his outer office at the Treasury to watch the Reuters screen. But when the announcement came, the pound did not respond at all. The line on the screen remained totally flat. Lamont felt like a surgeon who looks at a heart monitor and realizes that his patient has expired. All that remained was to unplug the system.

Lamont knew he had to take Britain out of the exchange-rate mechanism. But this would require the prime minister's approval, and Major was not immediately available. Lamont had his staff call Major's office repeatedly to stress the urgency of a meeting, but no audience was granted. Eventually Lamont led a team of advisers over to Admiralty House, the fine Georgian building that was serving temporarily as the prime ministerial residence; there they waited for at least another quarter of an hour before Major would see them. Lamont calculated that the nation was losing hundreds of millions of pounds every few minutes, but his boss looked annoyingly relaxed. He began the meeting by wondering aloud whether there was room for further financial diplomacy with Germany, then added that several other government ministers would shortly be joining the meeting. A meandering discussion ensued. Could Britain withdraw from the exchange-rate mechanism without offending its European partners? If it did withdraw, would there be calls for ministers' resignations? It became clear that Major's objective was to share responsibility for the crisis with the other people in the room--"we were there to put our hands in the blood," one minister later commented. It was a shrewd maneuver, and from Major's perspective, it served to neutralize potential rivals to his throne. Meanwhile, Druckenmiller and Soros were adding to their positions.

The Admiralty House meeting broke up without the decision to quit the exchange-rate mechanism that Lamont had wanted. Instead, Major insisted on another interest rate hike--this time of three additional percentage points, effective the next day--as a last ditch effort to save sterling. Again, Lamont watched the news break on the Reuters screen. Again, there was no effect on sterling's value. At their desks on the other side of the Atlantic, Druckenmiller and Soros saw the rate hikes as an act of desperation by a dying man. They were a signal that the end was nigh--and that it was time for one last push to sell the life out of the British currency.

Lamont proceeded to warn his fellow finance ministers in Europe of sterling's plight. His Italian counterpart, Piero Barucci, suggested that, rather than quitting the exchange-rate mechanism unilaterally, Lamont suspend markets to give himself time to negotiate a realignment with other European governments. Lamont had to point out that it is not in the power of a modern finance minister to suspend currency markets that trade continuously and globally.

That evening, Lamont called a press conference in the Treasury's central courtyard. At 7:30 p.m., facing a massive battery of TV cameras from all over the world, he announced Britain's exit from the exchange-rate mechanism.

The markets had won, and the government had at last recognized it.

Adapted from More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite, to be published by the Penguin Press on June 14.

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