The Odds of Mubarak Stepping Down Gain Attention

With much anticipation and bated breath, Egyptians waited hours for Hosni Mubarak to announce he would be resigning.   Instead, the nation’s troubled leader declared he had no intentions of relinquishing power.

Bookmaker.com last week released odds on Hosni Mubarak resigning and ultimately leaving the country.

The oddsmakers were not necessarily as confident of such a transition as the Obama Administration.

“Even odds were posted,” notes Payton O’Brien, Senior Editor of the Gambling911.com website.

The odds gained national mainstream media attention this week when Newsweek featured the Bookmaker.com prices in a cover story on the topic.  “It was looking as if those with money on the resignation could cash out late Thursday but that hasn’t happened.”

Bookmaker.com has since taken down its odds on the Mubarak resignation, still believing that at some point this will be imminent. 

From CNN International late Thursday Eastern Standard Time:

The recent trends of labor unions and professionals such as doctors joining the mass street protests signaled to the Egyptian military that Mubarak's hold on power seemed untenable and endangered the good standing of the armed forces itself in Egyptian society, analysts said.

"The military had to ask itself, 'Are we going to go down with Mubarak?' " said William Quandt, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia and a National Security Council staff member in the 1970s who was involved in the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. "The military said we are the backbone of the regimes, and we are pretty popular with the people."

- Gilbert Horowitz, Gambling911.com