“A woman must have money and a room of her own to write,” said Virginia Woolf in 1928 in A Room of One’s Own, which has since become a feminist classic. Her point applies much more broadly than to the struggle for women’s rights. Indeed, any human being needs space and money to be creative. The idea can be extended further: people need to be able to think independently.

The economic system is now plagued by a lack of independent or critical thinking, and the role this absence has played in the global financial crisis is becoming clearer by the day. The idea that professional investors apply rigorous independent analysis to everything they do has already taken a harsh beating this year. Some do, but many do not.