Here is one clear indicator of when the Financial Crisis actually started with a vengance, although its roots go back to the Clinton Administration at least and the repeal, in stages, of Glass-Steagall.
Source: Institutional Research Analyst and the FDIC
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.” Marcus Tullius Cicero