Outside of some people involved in the very-much off the books and unregulated bond markets, I doubt many economists had much to go off of. Before default rates rose catastrophically in a short period of time (I think, two and a half years or so?) there was no visibility into what would quickly become a failing market.
The complex instruments being bought and sold, likewise, there were economists who looked at those things and said, "Wait a second, you can't bundle a bunch of correlated instruments and expect to create an uncorrelated one." Some of these economists decided to make a great deal of money betting against the banks. Others decided not to because of the adage that the market can stay irrational longer than one can stay solvent. Still, I don't think many academic economists had visibility into what was going on in the mortgage bond market, and it's not like banks were advertising statistics on their predatory - and sometimes illegal - lending.
I think on a variety of important issues, it's possible to read the economists and find a broad consensus. Perhaps some outliers, but where there's data, there's often consensus. I follow the IGM Forum[1] which surveys a broad swathe of economists on issues, and quite often on issues I thought might be partisan, the economists show a decided consensus opinion I was unaware of.
Your reply about why the economists failed to predict the 2008 crash is an example of the problem the article is about. The economists didn't need a lot of technical information. They just needed to know that for a couple of hundred years banks had been careful about who they gave mortgages to because if they defaulted they would take a loss, but then they started bundling and selling them, so they felt safe to make it far too easy to get a mortgage. And that the bond rating agencies had a severe conflict of interest because they were paid by the people selling the bonds. And that credit default swaps are unregulated insurance.
Except for the cds part, all that was common knowledge. A little common sense would tell you this was a recipe for disaster, and in fact this was pointed out by people like Dean Baker at the time. The question is why the great majority of economists didn't take 30 seconds to look at the facts and agree, and the answer seems to be they simply lack common sense.
The complex instruments being bought and sold, likewise, there were economists who looked at those things and said, "Wait a second, you can't bundle a bunch of correlated instruments and expect to create an uncorrelated one." Some of these economists decided to make a great deal of money betting against the banks. Others decided not to because of the adage that the market can stay irrational longer than one can stay solvent. Still, I don't think many academic economists had visibility into what was going on in the mortgage bond market, and it's not like banks were advertising statistics on their predatory - and sometimes illegal - lending.
I think on a variety of important issues, it's possible to read the economists and find a broad consensus. Perhaps some outliers, but where there's data, there's often consensus. I follow the IGM Forum[1] which surveys a broad swathe of economists on issues, and quite often on issues I thought might be partisan, the economists show a decided consensus opinion I was unaware of.
[1] http://www.igmchicago.org/