Over the past few days I've come across four explanations for how we've got into the mess we're in. The first says the problem is having too many men in charge. If only women had been running the show they wouldn't have taken such big risks and banks would now still be lending and the economy would still be growing.

This theory strikes me as soppy, unprovable and altogether bone-headed. We have no idea what the economy would be like if run by women, as such an economy has never existed. My experience of being at an all-female educational establishment - a women's college at Oxford University - makes me inclined to think that things would be much the same. As far as I could tell, the main difference between women's and men's colleges (apart from the inferior architecture of the former) was more to do with appetite for breakfast than for risk. At my college the women students generally got up in time for scrambled egg on toast and traipsed into the hall in candlewick dressing gowns, while the men tended to stay in bed.

The second explanation blames the crisis not on too many males at the top, but too many alphas. What went wrong was that the leaders were too autocratic. If, instead, they had been more curious and more grounded, things would have worked out better.