Technocrats Step In Where Political Leaders Fear to Tread

In the past 12 months, four European premiers have lost their jobs because they failed to fix their countries’ mounting debt problems. A fifth could join the list on Nov. 20, when Spain holds a general election. The take-away: When leaders fail to address urgent fiscal matters, the capital markets will punish -- and ultimately remove -- them by making the cost of financing debt prohibitively high.