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Saddam Futures Tradesports.com runs an over-the-counter derivatives market with contracts covering various events.
Those of you who like a market solution for any problem will be pleased to know it quotes quarterly futures style contracts on the likelihood of Saddam being President of Iraq in December, March and June.
Market prices currently imply that he has an 83 percent chance of being the Mother of all Dictators come Christmas, but only a 48 percent chance of opening Easter Eggs as President and a 37 percent chance of seeing in the second half of the year in power.
Early optimism that Saddam would take an early bath has declined as time has progressed. Being an unregulated market there is of course nothing to stop Dubya doing a bit of insider trading…
Paul Staines
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This is just amazing. I don’t know how accurate these probabilities are, but in any case it seems some people will bet on anything.
I’d give Saddam about a 99.99% chance in Christmas, but it drops off sharply after that. 48% by Easter is probably a bit low, given Powell’s statments yesterday about regime change not being the central issue at the U.N.
In the UK this kind of Spread betting is commonplace, I used to get involved heavily in betting on cabinet reshuffles.
Stuart Wheeler’s IG index declined to take my political bets after I sold John Smith for PM – 2 mins after he died.
This is very similar to Robin Hanson’s concept of Idea Futures, based on market assessments of risk.
THe URL is http://hanson.gmu.edu/ideafutures.html
there is an article on cnn money about this
http://money.cnn.com/2003/01/14/markets/saddam/index.htm