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 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.

Yeah, that was part of the reason my probability was as low as it was. Actually, reflecting on it a tiny bit more rigorously, I'll nudge it down further to maybe 3%, because I originally rounded "before the end of the year" to "half a year" in my head, but the rest of 2015 is more like a third of a year.

I'd say around 50% prob of a crash of similar impact as 2008 starting by the end of the year.

With a looser prediction window like "beginning by the end of 2015, but hitting bottom before the end of 2016", I'd raise my "maybe 3%" to "maybe 12%".

a socialist talking about [...] legislating against toy soldiers

I had to Google that one!

Edit to add: regardless of the probability disagreement, I did upvote you for elaborating.