No, the economy wasn’t strong then, and it isn’t strong now. We built up far too much debt to finance a pittance of growth in the last seven years, and this level of new debt creation could not be extended forever.
In this case, it was the basement that cracked, not the roof. When the financial sector implodes, it takes the economy with it. That’s been proven true in every financial sector collapse in every country where it has happened for the last 150+ years.