True, none of the mainstream economists, those who influence what we read in the news and what governments do, saw the 2008 crisis coming. Some self-deprecating economist drew a meme showing the time economists realize that a bubble, like 2008 popped, was the same time that Wiley Coyote of the Road Runner cartoons realizes he has run out of road: when he’s treading air after running off a cliff. The economist who identified this recurring economic blind spot was Hyman Minsky, and so it became known as a Minsky Moment.
Long before their complete miss in 2008, economist Ezra Solomon had quipped: “God made economists to make astrologers look good”.