According to the section above, the European Exchange Rate Mechanism was established in 1979. But until October 1990, Britain had refused to join the ERM. The two officials at the time, John Major and Douglas Hurd, convinced the government to join the ERM, introducing the pound sterling into the ERM for the first time. By joining the ERM, the exchange rate between the British pound sterling and the currencies of other members would not fluctuate by more than 6%. The British government followed economic and monetary policies to ensure the rate of fluctuation was maintained (Black Wednesday - The Prelude - Encyclopedia II). Chancellor Geoffrey Howe and his successor Nigel Lawson were both supporters of a fixed exchange rate, both admiring the record of low exchange rates. the inflation that Germany has maintained and its management of the Bundesbank and the strength of the Deutsche Mark. The British Treasury had a policy of following the Deutsche Mark. There was huge controversy surrounding the government officials involved in this eventual adoption into the ERM, with the debate between Margaret Thatcher's economic adviser Alan Walters and Lawson arriving at a presupposition as a state. , when Walters declared that the exchange rate mechanism was “half-baked” (Kaletsky). All this partisan bickering and endless debate led Lawson to resign as chancellor to be replaced by John Major (Kaletsky). The two government officials, John Major and Douglas Hurd, had succeeded in forcing Margaret Thatcher to join the ERM in October 1990, thereby ensuring that the British government would follow an economic and monetary policy that would prevent the exchange rate between the pound sterling and other member currencies to fluctuate by more than 6%. The pound sterling entered the 2 mechanism...... middle of paper...... banks amassed huge sums of money in an incredibly short period of time. After all the turmoil and intense speculative betting, Norman Lamont, chancellor at the time of the crisis, announced at 7 p.m. GST that Britain would leave the ERM and return its rate to its normal level of 10%. Other ERM countries, such as Italy, whose currencies had reached their lower limits during the day, had remained in the ERM and instead reached an agreement with the EMS to simply temporarily widen their bands until May the troubles of Black Wednesday be over. Despite this, the ERM was incredibly vulnerable to further speculative attacks on economies on the brink, the hunt was on for Eurozone central banks and ten months later the rules were relaxed even further to the point of becoming a really ineffective set of tapes. which were useless to keep the member countries under control of the ECU.