{"id":4917,"date":"2008-11-13T18:04:04","date_gmt":"2008-11-14T02:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=4917"},"modified":"2008-11-13T18:04:37","modified_gmt":"2008-11-14T02:04:37","slug":"how-many-troops-will-obama-withdraw-from-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/13\/how-many-troops-will-obama-withdraw-from-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"How Many Troops will Obama Withdraw from Iraq?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\">The <a href=\"http:\/\/intrade.com\">InTrade<\/a> prediction markets allows individuals to bet on the winner of the presidential elections and US recession timings.\u00c2\u00a0 They can also be used to bet on US foreign policy.\u00c2\u00a0 The graph below shows the contract price for the outcome &#8220;Number of US Troops in Iraq (given a Democratic president) as of June 2010.&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.intrade.com\/aav2\/trading\/tradingHTML.jsp?selConID=565198\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/data.intrade.com\/graphing\/closingChart.gif?contractId=565198&amp;intradeChart=true&amp;transBackground=true&amp;transBackground=true\" alt=\"\" width=\"460\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A couple of features stand out.\u00c2\u00a0 First, the price was relatively constant for almost all of 2008.\u00c2\u00a0 Second, the price has fluctuated wildly since November 5th and is now 30% below its 2008 average.\u00c2\u00a0 Here is how you calculate the implied June 2010 troop level from the contract price:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>expected 2010 troop level = contract price x 2000<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil\/personnel\/MILITARY\/history\/hst0806.pdf\">As of the end of June<\/a> [pdf], there were 183,100 troops participating in Operation Iraqi Freedom.\u00c2\u00a0 So a price for a &#8220;no change in troop levels&#8221; is 91.55 compared to a current price of 29.9. This price says that the Intrade &#8220;market&#8221; expects about 60,000 US troops in Iraq by the end of June 2010. (Note: As a thinly traded contract, it is difficult to infer true market expectations from the price.)\u00c2\u00a0 If you predict less &#8220;change&#8221; from this administration, you might think this is an extremely low number.\u00c2\u00a0 If you have little hope for real change, then perhaps you should purchase the contract today.\u00c2\u00a0 Contracts on other foreign policy-related issues are also available:<br \/>\n<strong><br \/>\nGitmo closed by December 31st, 2009 (low number &#8211;&gt; low predicted likelihood)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.intrade.com\/aav2\/trading\/tradingHTML.jsp?selConID=622301\"><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/data.intrade.com\/graphing\/closingChart.gif?contractId=622301&amp;intradeChart=true&amp;transBackground=true&amp;transBackground=true\" alt=\"\" width=\"460\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Gates as Sec. of Defense (high number &#8211;&gt; high expected likelihood)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.intrade.com\/aav2\/trading\/tradingHTML.jsp?selConID=654307\"><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/data.intrade.com\/graphing\/closingChart.gif?contractId=654307&amp;intradeChart=true&amp;transBackground=true&amp;transBackground=true\" alt=\"\" width=\"460\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The InTrade prediction markets allows individuals to bet on the winner of the presidential elections and US recession timings.\u00c2\u00a0 They can also be used to bet on US foreign policy.\u00c2\u00a0 The graph below shows the contract price for the outcome &#8220;Number of US Troops in Iraq (given a Democratic president) as of June 2010.&#8221; A [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,131],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iraq","category-obama"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4917"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4921,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4917\/revisions\/4921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4917"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}