A side note, but my immediate reaction to reading that was "that's overconfidence", though it's quite possible I'm interpreting "financial crash" more grandly than you intended. If I define it — just to try to be more concrete, albeit still pretty fuzzy — as an event as bad as the 2007-8 financial crisis, I'd put a probability ≈5% on that happening by 2015's end.
I'm basically claiming that I know better than the market, so I'm surprised you're the first person to call me on it. Rigorous definitions are complicated by the fact that the 2007-8 financial crisis took about a year to bottom out - even if the next crash started right now, it (probably) wouldn't bottom out by the end of the year. I'd say around 50% prob of a crash of similar impact as 2008 starting by the end of the year. Perhaps I should get a predictionbook account and register my unusual predictions.
Yes, predictions about nationalism/communism are simple extrapolations. I wish to emphasise that I don't think this is necessary a disaster - the SNP are not your stereotypical nationalists, and are not a huge source of concern IMO, and Japan is an ethno-nationalist state which seems to be functioning perfectly fine.
I do find it surprising/worrying that the frontrunner for the leader of the opposition in the UK is a socialist talking about encouraging growth by printing money, leaving NATO, funding homoeopathy, legislating against toy soldiers, etc., and is mostly rejected by his own party for being too left-wing.
I'm basically claiming that I know better than the market, so I'm surprised you're the first person to call me on it.
To be fair, I didn't look at the markets either. I asked my gut for a reference class forecast ("How often might I expect this kind of crisis to come along in general...?") while trying to remember my impressions of what economic commentators have said about potential bubbles & such. (I used this sort of tactic to guess rough, first-cut probability estimates in the Good Judgment Project, where I did OK.)
...Rigorous definition
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