William Greider predicted 2008 in 1997 book "One World Ready or Not":

from p334
As capital owners and financial markets accumulate greater girth and a dominating influence, their search for higher returns becomes increasingly purified in purpose - detached from social concerns and abstracted from the practical realities of commerce. In this atmosphere, investors develop rising expectations of what their invested savings ought to earn and the rising prices in financial markets gradually diverge from the underlying economic reality. Since returns on capital are rising faster than the productive output that must pay them, the process imposes greater and greater burdens on commerce and societies - debt obligations that cannot possibly be fulfilled by the future and, sooner or later, must be liquidated, written off or forgiven.
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A market crash ... is the abrupt deflation of prices and of misplaced hopes.
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The rich nations of the world are acting like ancient usurers, lending money to the desperate poor on terms that cannot possibly be met and, thus, steadily acquiring more and more control over the lives and assets of the poor.
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The social question - how does a society sustain equable relations among its own people - has been brushed aside by the economic sphere. Social cohesion and consent, even the minimal standards of human decency, are irrelevant to free markets.