Markets & Finance risk-off · 6–18 months
A what‑if from the future

What if bank failures deplete the FDIC fund and trigger hefty special assessments?

Large failures deplete the Deposit Insurance Fund, triggering hefty special assessments on surviving banks that dent earnings and capital just as conditions worsen.

5%
our model probability
over 6–18 months
prediction markets — the market's odds
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Anchored to measured history 5% · 90% range 0–10% · 40 dated precedents behind it — a wider range means thinner evidence

Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.

The butterfly cascade

How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.

Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving

Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 6–18 months horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…

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What it would mean

If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. Large failures deplete the Deposit Insurance Fund, triggering hefty special assessments on surviving banks that dent earnings and capital just as conditions worsen. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Credit spreads ▲ · Financial conditions ▲ · Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.

Methodology. Probability and impact are anchored to history and scored against what actually happens — wins and losses, in public, at Reality Check. Market odds live from Polymarket & Kalshi. By Vikas Singh, Quantitative Strategist. Updated 2026-08-13.