There were people who were posting their stuff on the internet. http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/ was a great resource before the crisis documenting how far off the rails the mortgage business had gone. I wouldn't say it went viral, but it did garner a lot of attention for a finance blog. Paul Krugman even mentioned it on his blog. Of course almost everyone I talked to about it back in 2007 treated me like I just said Stanley Kubrick filmed the moon landing. Back then it was pretty hard to say "Alan Greenspan is wrong and the guy on this blog is right" and have anyone take you seriously.
"Tanta" who cowrote the blog with "CR" sadly passed away a few years ago. She knew more about mortgage backed securities than probabaly everyone at the SEC and the Fed combined. One of her blog entries, "The Ubernerds Guide to Mortgage Securitization" was footnoted in a paper from the Federal Reserve.
CalculatedRisk was a pleasure to read. She and CR were not super bears. They were measured, cautious and thoughtful -- reason to be ignored when everyone else is making money.
