Dow Down 200+ as Markets Wake to Brexit Again

It's Day 2 of the new Brexit reality, at least as far as the markets are concerned, and the Dow started the day down roughly 1%, with the drop hovering around 205 points as of this writing at 17,195. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq were down roughly the same percentage. That's thus far more modest than what we saw Friday. The British pound, which last week plunged to its lowest level since 1985, dropped another 2.4% to $1.3352, despite the British Treasury's reassurances that the economy was strong enough to withstand the uncertainty. European stock markets added to their painful losses from Friday, when concern over the vote outcome wiped out $2.1 trillion of stock value from Hong Kong to London to New York, reports the AP.

Britain's FTSE 100 was down 1.3% at 6,056 while Germany's DAX shed 1.3% to 9,434 and France's CAC 40 dropped 1.3% as well to 4,053. Meanwhile, in a Monday CNBC interview Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said that the decision of British voters to leave the European Union is "an additional headwind" for the US and global economies but "there is no sense of a financial crisis developing." He continued, per the AP, "I am not saying there will not be an impact on markets but it has been an orderly impact so far." (More Brexit stories.)