Something was ‘up’ earlier.
IIRC, it was around February 2007 the Bush economics advisers/officials showed up on the Sunday morning news-talk programs for a couple of weeks. Their talkingpoints were how great the economy was, how solid, no problems, everything looked rosy.
I thought it strange that they were doing such a ‘hard sell’, considering things looked pretty good on the homefront — fly-over country.
By mid summer, we began to hear rumor and read news reports of economic problems, banking problems, etc., and by fall the rumors were turning into truths, and the GW advisers were talking massive bailouts.
[That was pre-Obama. It developed during GW’s 2nd term. I think the earlier news-talk appearances were nothing more than attempts to try to head off what the experts saw coming. They tried to keep things ‘up’ until Bush left office, but they fell short and it hit during GW’s last 2 years.]
Consider the mysterious sell-off in the equity markets on February 27, 2007.
This was the entry point on the short side for some well-informed market participants.
The next warning was major quant funds blowing up in September-October 2007. Historic relationships between markets started to break down then.
S&P 500 topped out on October 31, 2007.