My take: look for financial greed running amok. I can recall a few years prior to 2008 I contacted someone in one of the online dating sites; she was too busy closing real estate deals to go out with me. Another one did, a Russian expat who wanted to talk to me about where else to buy - she had just refinanced her condo and was looking to buy more. Those two events, maybe around 2005-ish, told me that things were not going to end well.

Prior to that time, just before the turn of the century, I was working on an expert system middle tier for a bank (y2k) while half the workers around me were spending weekends bundling some kind of financial instrument which combined risky loans with good ones; the bank was hustling those. Little did I realize then that this was what was fueling the real estate boom which I encountered a few years later. Also did not see, at that time, just how that game would bring down the economy.

So...look around. Anything like that going on now (well, in the previous few years)?

Remember "too big to fail". Anything like that now? I think that the fed chair back then spoke of "irrational exuberance".