Why have so many investors been so wrong about gilts?

The expectation was that super easy monetary policy, combined with (in some countries) loose fiscal policy, would result in a bounce back in growth, an erosion of spare capacity, and ultimately inflationary pressure. A significant minority even thought that the experiment with unconventional monetary policy would inevitably result in something akin to what happened in Weimar Germany, and probably bought a lot of gold. The consequence of this consensus view was that many people have loathed bonds for years, and government bonds in particular. I think a lot of this stems from invest...