I think most people in the business knew that the outcome was going to be pretty ugly but with everyone making big money hand over fist who was going to be the one to stand up and try to stop the money train? Really it was the RE industry that was carrying the US economy during those years so you know the government wasn’t going to intervene. I imagine the Bush administration was hoping to be out of office by the time the shit hit the fan.
When you here talk like “no one saw this coming” its mainly geared towards regular working people that really have no clue what is going on in the financial world, a way to try and save face after screwing us over.