What if Ghana's cedi slides past 18 as reserves drain away?
Cocoa and gold shortfalls draining Ghana's reserves snap the cedi and revive default chatter on its 2024-restructured debt; the cleanest read is wider frontier-sovereign spreads, not global HY. Rhymes with Ghana's own 2022 DDEP collapse and Zambia's 2020 default. Ghana funds imports off cocoa/gold receipts to China and Switzerland; a receipts miss is self-reinforcing. Forward: post-restructuring, the marginal holder is distressed funds, so the move is contained versus 2022.
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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 0–6 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…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. Cocoa and gold export shortfalls drain Ghana's reserves, snapping the cedi past 18/USD and reviving default chatter. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — EM currencies ▼ · Credit spreads ▲ · Climate/crop supply ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.