markets

With the agreement on power sharing this week Lebanon appears to have stepped back from the brink. Will the factions be able to work together in the new government? Traders so far are cautiously optimistic, predicting a 40% chance of a Hezbollah coup in the next two months. Are they right or will the deal collapse in on itself? Will Hezbollah stage a successful coup d'etat?

Traders are so far split on the question of where the price of rice will be in 3 months time with predicted cost at $216, the same as it was for March. Do you disagree with their take on the food crisis situation? What will the price of rice be in July?

The wisdom of the crowd was throughly with Mugabe remaining President past April 30 but the predictions continues with the Who will be the next president of Zimbabwe? market. Will he hang on by hook or by crook in the secound round of voting or will a face-saving deal be recached that sees him exiting the top job in favour of a compromise candidate? Roger Southall has a great analysis of the situation in his article South Africa and Zimbabwe: the end of “quiet diplomacy”?.

If you haven't heard about the markets before, or simply lost track, then you might like to know that openDemocracy is running a set of predictive markets to tap into the collective knowledge of the oD community in order to predict events around the world.

In the past few weeks we've added a number of markets covering a broad range of topics. Starting with the our series of Russia markets for the opening of the 2008 markets we've gone on and posted markets on economic matters, elections and the Olympics, among others.

Economic