CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — One has go back to the "Year of Three Popes" (1978) to find a succession drama as strange as what has been happening at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the two pillars of global finance.

Two months ago, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz resigned amid an extraordinary staff mutiny and governance debacle. Now, his counterpart at the International Monetary Fund, the former Spanish Finance Minister Rodrigo Rato, has shocked major stakeholders by announcing that he, too, will leave in October.

To lose one international lending institution head is misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness. Coming on the 10th-year anniversary of the Asian financial crisis, the caldron in which today's ultra-liquid capital markets were forged, conspiracy theories abound.