I was there for the Great Recession, and they were indeed in the public discussion. I remember the year 2007, as a 20 year old anti-capitalist, I was counting days until the economic crash. As predicted by plenty of left-wing economists at the time.

The only people who didn’t see it coming were the capitalists who were invested in the inflated market, and had bought into pseudo-scientific economic theories that served the single purpose of affirming what the capitalists already believed.

This is a bit of a "broken clock is right eventually" sort of thing, though. I could say without any evidentiary basis "there will be a financial crisis" for years and eventually be right, but I don't think it would be fair to say that I predicted it in a meaningful way. The details matter.

Yeah me too, now I invest in dividend stocks.

I was too - and to be frank: it's dishonestly revisionist to say this was a topic in the public eye.

There's a very good reason a book (and movie) like The Big Short was such a big hit. It's because it was about the handful of people who actually saw the crash coming and were confident enough to put their money and reputation on the line.