Mainstream Economists: When The Storm Is Past The Ocean Is Flat Again

Did economists predict the possibility of the global economic crisis before it occurred? Did they describe sources of instability as they were building up? I think the following three papers are good for exploring these questions:

• Dirk J. Bezemer (2009) "'No One Saw This Coming': Understanding Financial Crisis Through Accounting Models".
• James K. Galbraith (2009) "Who Are These Economists, Anyway?", Thought and Action.
• Andrea Imperia and Vincenzo Maffeo (2009) "As if Nothing Were Going to Happen: A Search in Vain for Warnings about the Current Crisis in Economic Journals with the Highest Impact Factors" 13th Conference of the Research Network Macroeconomics and Macroeconomic Policies: The World Economy in Crisis - The Return of Keynesianism, Berlin (30-31 October.

The answer I get from these articles is mainly negative for orthodox economics. Robert Shiller receives praise. He could be said to be a mainstream economist. But, as I understand it, his analysis was based on behavioral economics and the rejection of the Efficient Market Hypothesis. The empirical evidence suggests macroeconomists should expand research following Wynne Godley's stock-flow consistent models. Imperia and Maffeo point to those who argued that financial innovation was leading to increased debt, an attempt to compensate for reduced aggregate demand resulting from increased income inequality.