I remember the day the yield curve inverted in 2005 because I was working for a company that made risk assessment software for MBS. Our call center blew up as the reports started showing how risky balance sheets were.

It’s a nice story that Michael Lewis writes in “The Big Short” about how only a few people made money shorting the crisis but a) its largely not true and b) its more the fact that shorting isn’t nearly as easy as HN seems to think it is.

It was a damned complex system and so is the economy. A lot of stuff is only fully obvious in hindsight.

You also have the problem of knowing who to listen to. Many people are warning about many things right now. Some are prescient, some are wrong. How to judge?

2008 could have been better predicted and better prevented, but it's false to say no one warned.