[trevelyan]

You might want to follow Brad DeLong's blog. Krugman also talked about housing bubbles (http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/01/paul_krugman_on.html) back in 2006. He wrote a column that said so explicitly, arguing that "part of the rise in housing values since 2000 [has been] justified given the fall in interest rates, but at this point the overall market value of housing has lost touch with economic reality. And there's a nasty correction ahead."

My memory of the blogosphere is that people knew housing was overvalued and a lot of people were taking equity out of their homes by remortgaging them at high valuations. But I do not remember discussion of how much fraud there was in originating and repackaging housing loans, and no-one was talking about how these were getting securitized and distributed.