I read that article in the Atlantic (or at least the first page since it wouldnt let me go beyond that) and I am not as impressed as you were.
First, it is written by a guy who missed the tech bubble AND the current housing bubble. He admits he "drove his clients over a cliff". This is a guy who has an obvious self interest in saying "nobody could have foreseen". But in fact they did. When you are looking at graphs like this one:
Calculated Risk: House Price-to-Income Ratio
You shouldnt have to wait until it turns down to know that something bad is going to happen. It is obvious way before the **** hits the fan that a crash is going to happen because the curve has gone so way way way far out of historical ranges. And there are plenty of other examples of indicators that were ridiculously out of whack. It was obvious YEARS before the end that things were dangerously wrong.
So I dont buy the self serving claims that nobody could have known. They did and they said so.
The author did have a point though in that there is plenty of blame to go around. There was a near universal failure on the part of ALL the potential regulators to do ANYTHING. And they could have. There was no reason, for example, we couldnt have said to insurance companies that they needed to have capital to back them if they wanted to sell default swaps. We didnt but could have and will in the future. Again, this was not something that suddenly appeared out of the clear blue sky.
The challenge for the future will be to put in enough regulation to prevent this kind of excess but not so much that we return to the old days where there was too much regulation. We all should hope they get it right. But doing nothing is insane. Unless you LIKE having the economy of 2008.