Think Saddam Hussein's days are numbered? Care to put a little money on
it?
If so, tune up your Web browser to one of the many Internet gambling
sites taking bets on how long America's most wanted despot will hold onto
the presidency of Iraq.
Big money is riding on the question -- about $1.25 million in wagers just
on one site,
www.tradesports.com.
Late Thursday, the site put Saddam's chances of lasting in office through
Monday at about 90 percent. But he was given only a 1 in 3 chance of
being in power at the end of April.
Betonsports.com, which bills itself as the Internet's "largest,
legal and licensed sportsbook," puts Saddam's chances of remaining
in Baghdad until June 30 at 1 in 15. The site offers 5-to-1 odds he will
be in U.S. hands by then.
Some may consider wagering on the forceful ouster of a despot to be in
poor taste. Not Eric Zitzewitz, a Stanford University economics professor
who is using tradesports.com as a research tool.
"Yeah, war is a terrible thing. But you'd like to have information
about it," and the site has potential to provide it, he says.
Tradesports.com doesn't set any odds. Its bets are set up as futures
contracts that bettors buy and sell directly to one another. The most
active "Saddam security" pays $100 if Iraq's leader is ousted
by March 30. If he's still ruling on that date, it pays nothing.
The future sold at around $60 when trading began back in September and it
looked like Saddam had about a fair chance of lasting until spring. Then
its price gradually declined to about $25 as the U.N. Security Council
debated and Iraq agreed to admit weapons inspectors, a stalling tactic
that increased Saddam's chances of hanging on until the end of March.
The price rebounded when in December U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell
complained about the incompleteness of Iraq's weapons disclosure to the
U.N. and then accused Iraq of being in "material breach" of the
Security Council resolution. Then the price declined, with a brief spike
in January when U.N. inspectors found warheads capable of carrying
chemical weapons.
But the real action began after the bombs started to fly on March 19. The
price of the March 30 Saddam future jumped from $19 to an all-time high
of $88, an indication that most people believed the Iraqi leader would be
out within days.
But over the weekend it became clear that the second Gulf War would be
longer than the first. With the contract set to expire in less than 10
days, the price of the March 30 future quickly eroded. By Thursday
afternoon it was trading at around $10.
"What's great about a financial market is you've got to put your
money where your mouth is," Zitzewitz said. "It's a reasonably
good proxy for what the average person thinks based on publicly available
information."
Interestingly, the oil and stock markets generally move in concert with
Saddam securities, according to a paper written by Zitzewitz and a
Stanford colleague, Justin Wolfer, and Andrew Leigh, a student at Harvard
University's Kennedy School of Government.
"What's great about a financial market is you've got to put your
money where your mouth is. It's a reasonably good proxy for what the
average person thinks based on publicly available
information."
Eric Zitzewitz, a Stanford University economics professor
When Cypherpunks are called
"terrorists," we will have done our jobs.
Font: Daschle-Anthrax-Bold
http://www.primitivism.com/assassination.htm
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,35620,00.html
http://freedom.orlingrabbe.com/lfetimes/jbellth.htm
http://www.stiffs.com/
http://www.tradesports.com/
"If we find negligence on the side of any person or
institution...
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... Public Subscription Assassination .Assassins sans Frontiers.
