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Comment by louthy | Hacker News Reader

I remember reading articles about the subprime problem in the Economist way before the crash. I think they're pretty good on the whole at being informative and not sensationalist.

Here's one from 2006 [1] that I found relatively easily. But there's one in my head that I remember about an HSBC owned bank that was flailing and could potentially start a crisis, but I can't find it right now - I just remember reading it at the time, it was the reason I decided to wait for a downturn in the housing market. I wish I'd ignored it and bought at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight ...

[1] https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2006/12/13/s...

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Yup. I’m always amazed when people say nobody saw the recession coming, because I distinctly remember multiple news stories about the subprime mortgage brouhaha for a year or two before the bubble burst.

People hear what they want to hear, and remember what they want to remember, I suppose.

Many people saw that housing was probably overvalued and that there was a wave of unaffordable payment hikes in the pipeline on the loans secured against that housing coming. A falling housing market is hardly a once in 100 year phenomenon, and many other housing markets had operated with similar products (teaser rates etc) for many years, and continue to operate on that basis.

Many people also saw a recession coming, because recessions always come eventually - it's a normal part of the economic cycle.

Relatively few people saw that these two things would result in many of the largest financial institutions on the planet coming near to collapse.

Even fewer people got the timing right. And not many of those had the courage of their convictions to actually place bets on it.

I clearly remember NPR was talking about the subprime in Feb-Mar of 2007. That does not mean that NPR foresaw 2008 great recession. Most people saw a dip, but very very few people saw a Valley that it truly was.

The scale was unclear, the problem wasn't.

Why do you wish that you had bought the house despite accurately predicting and waiting for the downturn? Didn’t you get a significantly better deal or did it just get offset anyway? Curious because it’s a similar decision now. A recession is inevitable, will it happen in the next 3-6 months or take two years is hard to predict.

> Why do you wish that you had bought the house despite accurately predicting and waiting for the downturn?

Because in the UK prices didn't fall, but the requirements for purchase became significantly more difficult.

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