Queen Elizabeth gets compelling, competing theories on credit crunch

Her Majesty would like an explanation of how her beloved country has fallen into a deep and undignified recession. Six months after a tour of the halls of the London School of Economics -- where she carefully enunciated, "Why did no one see it coming?" -- Queen Elizabeth II now has conflicting answers from a pair of rival camps of British intellectuals.

The first reply, penned by a group of leading economists and public servants who call themselves the British Academy, arrived on July 26, and focused on the usual suspects: bankers, the government, and a general failure to assess mounting (and gargantuan) financial risks.