[grbalaffa]

> I've heard it argued that the housing bubble was somehow "unforeseeable" and that "no one saw it coming."

I've heard this from various corners as well, and it utterly amazes me that there are people who would actually try to claim that with a straight face. There certainly was plenty of warning of the housing bubble both in the mainstream press and elsewhere. Here are just a couple of examples:

The Economist called it "the biggest bubble in history" in 2005:

http://www.economist.com/node/4079027

And here is a blog which goes back to 2004 dedicated to discussing the housing bubble:

  http://thehousingbubble.blogspot.com  (original site)
  http://thehousingbubbleblog.com       (post-move site)

Also, Wikipedia does a pretty good job of collecting the history of various warnings and indications here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_housing_bubble#Id...

In short, it's quite obvious that plenty of people "saw it coming", and anyone trying to claim otherwise is just desperately playing the CYA game.

[pessimizer]

Thanks for the Wikipedia link - never knew a list that detailed of the public predictors existed. Will send it as a reference instead of trying to remember names that the person I'm arguing with doesn't even recognize. Love that Dean Baker ( http://www.cepr.net/index.php/beat-the-press/ )is in the power position.