The thing is, most people had no clue about what the financial system had done in 2007. At the time it seemed like the housing market was going down (as housing

The thing is, most people had no clue about what the financial system had done in 2007. At the time it seemed like the housing market was going down (as housing markets do), and that there was a large amount of sub-prime foreclosures (which is why people were referring to it as the sub-prime crisis at the beginning), but there wasn't the sense that the entire financial system was about to fall apart. After the collapse there was a lot of talk about what the financial sector had been doing with things like mortgage backed securities and credit default swaps, but the average person wasn't aware of these things even as the crisis was unfolding. Again, I'm not saying that I think this is what we're facing at the moment. The point is that it can be hard to know when a big crash is happening, because there are often a lot of problems people are only aware of in hindsight.