Markets, which aren't ideological but do provide a daily reference of relative value, weren't buying it. The euro gained 9.4 percent in the second half of 2010 and advanced another 11.9 percent through 2015 when 19 countries accepted it as their national store of value. Last year, when another Greek government was back in the headlines reportedly on the verge of default and soon to exit the euro, the investor George Soros said Greece was going down the drain. During this time the yield on the benchmark Greek bond never got close to its 2012 low yield of 30 percent, instead fluctuating between 7 percent and 18 percent. Greek debt, protected by the shared European currency, proved to be the best investment globally from July through the end of 2015, Bloomberg data show. [...]
But Britons' vote to leave the EU is unlike any other event in modern times. Investors didn't imagine a majority of voters choosing a result that proved unprecedented in its immediate and devastating impact on the British pound. The scope of this misjudgment, derived from a combination of complacency and wishful thinking, was revealed in minutes. While sterling suffered its biggest one-day decline since 1980 on June 24, the 8.05 percent loss was almost twice that of Sept. 16, 1992, the so-called Black Wednesday, when the Conservative government was forced to withdraw the pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism against a tide of speculation led by Soros. The toll of Thursday's vote on the pound was more than double any of the eight worst days since 1981, and its almost 13 percent reversal in less than a week dwarfed any of the previous currency debacles, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
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