Was this mortgage downturn preventable?

Free Internet Press: “‘The tragedy of the current situation is that it was entirely predictable,’ said John H. Vogel, Jr., a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, who wrote in 2005 about the dangers of mortgage-loan excesses. ‘What’s surprising is how fast this is unraveling,’ he said. ‘Mortgage brokers pushed exotic mortgage products that allowed people to buy houses that only made sense if prices kept rising. Now that houses have stopped appreciating, people are going to lose their homes and their savings.'”