[extropy-chat] Impeachment of President Bush What odds am Ioffered?

[Brett Paatsch]

Hal Finney wrote:

> Brett writes:
>> If I was to say that I have US$1000 of real money that
>> says that President George W Bush will be impeached
>> what odds would serious minded people like to offer me
>> I wonder?
>
> There is a related claim at the FX game,
> http://www.ideosphere.com/fx-bin/Claim?claim=BuImp
>
> : Claim BuImp - Bush impeached or resigns
> :
> : This claim will be true if a majority of the US house votes to impeach
> : George Bush--or Bush resigns from office. It may be judged when another
> : US president is inaugurated or George Bush out of office.
> :
> : Note: it is not necessary for the Senate to convict Bush for this claim
> : to be true.
>
> Since its creation in September, the claim has traded very stably at
> about 20, implying a roughly 20% chance of coming true.  This counts
> both resignation and impeachment, so the odds of just impeachment would
> be somewhat lower, but I don't know how much.

I don't know exactly how much lower either but it would be significantly
lower I'd think, as suggested by Nixon who resigned in the face of 
impeachment articles against him having been prepared by the House
Judiciary Committee.  
http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/impeachments/nixon.htm

Faced with the fact of articles of impeachment having been prepared
and the US people and its representatives being ready to impeach him
it seems likely to me at a gutcheck level that Bush would find or be
persuaded perhaps by other Republicans to find resignation to be the
better option. 

Without doing a lot of analysis and what might amount to little better
than guessing even then I don't know that I could work out the probability
of X given Y, but I'd think X given Y would probably still be greater than
not X given Y, where Y is articles of impeachment having been prepared
and X is impeachment. 

> So I'd be willing to offer 4 to 1 odds against, and feel like I had a
> modest profit expectation.  And yes, I'd be willing to cover the
> $1000 bet (putting up my $4000 against that).

If Bush were to 'do a Nixon', and resign after articles of impeachment
were prepared by the House Judiciary Committee, then he would
not be impeached as he would not be President and impeachment
would not be necessary, but he *would* have been held somewhat
to account.  

What I am actually interested in is whether the US voters through their
elected representatives and the US system will hold this US President
to account. 

Let's say I agree to take your odds Hal, are there any UK based
extropes that you would be willing to have hold our stakes? Or 
alternatively, how would you propose to proceed? Reply offlist if
you prefer. 

Brett Paatsch