Who Saw It Coming?

Michael J. Panzer offers up a list of market watchers who were not just delusional bonehead optimists in the runup (and who are not today) (link)--and do not miss the interesting add-ons in the comments. A thorough read of Fool's Gold by GillianTett will offer up a few more. All of which raises an interesting and I think not-obvious point. Specifically--when we speak of people who "saw it coming," we tend to make it sound like they were isolated voices crying in the wilderness. Okay, granted, they weren't running major banks (although JP Morgan Chase seems to have pulled itself through fairly well). But in fact, they were not isolated; in fact there were quite a lot of informed, intelligent, non-crazy observers (or participant) observers who "saw it coming" and said so. Fat lot of good it did them, except maybe they constructed their own portfolios accordingly.