If the financial markets had cast all the votes, Mario Monti, Italy's outgoing prime minister, would have romped to victory in this week's general election. Instead ordinary Italians ranked him fourth, a long way behind a party run by a comedian, BeppeGrillo. The relationship between markets and democracies is an uneasy one. Voters resent the idea that investors appear to have power over them-that a sell-off in the bond or currency markets can cause an economic crisis. But the way to become independent of the markets is for the government to balance its budget and for the country to avoid a trade deficit. Achieving those goals usually involves imposing the very policies that the markets favour and the voters resent.
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