Nearly 1 in 4 think Libby will get pardon

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Nearly a quarter of traders think Scooter Libby, convicted ex-chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, will be pardoned by President Bush by the end of December, according to the online trading market Intrade.com.

And if you look out further into the future, traders are betting there's a 63 percent chance Libby will be pardoned by the time Bush leaves office, according to the same market.

Scooter Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of lying and impeding a CIA leak investigation Tuesday.

The Dublin-based online market is offering two contracts on Libby's post-conviction fate and plans to offers more in the future.

"People are very keyed-up about the Libby pardon," John Delaney, founder and CEO of Dublin-based Intrade.com, said in an e-mail message.

"This is a very important issue that people understandably have firm opinions about," said Delaney. "Such 'zeal' has converted into thousands of people from all over the globe, but particularly from the U.S.," he added, regarding where traders are betting from.

Intrade.com creates markets based on a variety of real world events such as the U.S. elections, the chance of the U.S. economy going into a recession, and the first snowfall in New York City.

Delaney says predictions from markets like Intrade.com are typically more accurate than opinion polls. Intrade.com's attracts uses from 129 countries with a large percentage coming from major U.S. cities.

"Routinely obvious and significant money value can be identified by people who really know a subject who are not 'traders or investors' in the normal course of events," said Delaney.

Libby was convicted Tuesday of lying and obstructing an investigation into the Bush administration's actions leading into the Iraq war. He resigned after being indicted in October 2005.

Since Libby's conviction the likelihood of a pardon has been widely speculated by the press and public. Right after the verdict, Democrats began calling on Bush not to pardon Libby.

Vice President Dick Cheney is the former CEO of oil services group Halliburton Co (Charts)., which competes with Schlumberger (Charts). The work of both firms caters to the needs of the oil industry, dominated by such giants as BP (Charts), Exxon Mobil (Charts) and Chevron (Charts).

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