Dean Baker, co-director of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research

In the years leading up to the GFC, Baker wrote numerous columns tipping an American housing price bubble and a subsequent burst. In 2004, in an article in The Nation titled “Bush’s house of cards”, he wrote: “The crash of the housing market will not be pretty. It is virtually certain to lead to a second dip to the recession. Even worse, millions of families will see the bulk of their savings disappear as homes in some of the bubble areas lose 30 per cent, or more, of their value.”

In November 2006, Baker published his paper Recession Looms for the US Economy in 2007, in which he predicted a “downturn in consumption spending, which together with plunging housing investment, will likely push the economy into recession.”

Policy rethink: Since the GFC, Baker has warned against the incompetence of financial policymakers. In his 2010 book, False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy, he states that the US needs to “rein in a financial sector that has grown out of control”.

Raghuram Rajan, governor of the Reserve Bank of India

As an economic counsellor at the International Monetary Fund in 2005, Raghuram Rajan drew disapproving looks from an audience of economists and bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming when he questioned the “worrisome” actions of the banks. He said the rollout of complicated instruments such as credit-default swaps and mortgage-backed securities made the global financial system a riskier place. Indeed, he argued that such developments “may also create a greater – albeit still small – probability of a catastrophic meltdown”.

Given that investments markets were revelling in high growth at the time, Rajan was an easy target for criticism. By 2008, his concerns had been justified. Now the head of India’s central bank, Rajan is again worried – he is warning that “super-easy” money from the world’s central banks, including the US Federal Reserve, to combat recession is inflating assets and encouraging bad investments.

Market meddling: Rajan fears long-term low interest rates and unorthodox programs to stimulate economies, such as quantitative easing, may lead to more turmoil in financial markets.

“My sense is that monetary policy can only do so much and beyond a certain point if you try to use monetary policy it does more damage than good,” he told Time magazine in August 2014.