Will the attorney general indict Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert?

Thank you kruijs! I thought we would see a question on this subject today...

is suspend date also the settlement date?

No. (Good question though.) I'm going to change the suspend date to into early 2009. Question will settle based on whether he is indicted while still PM. The question was asked when it seemed most likely that his unknown (at the time) successor would form a coalition government and he would step down at that time. But with Livni's failure to accomplish that and the snap election, he is staying on until the election.

Because this may not have been what you expected, predictors can send me a flag if they want to cancel a previous wager.

The election is Feb 10, it has just been announced. http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-bc-ml--israel-politics,0,6311483.story

The suspend date will be Feb 5th, to add a little risk to the late-predicting.

Comment 4 is subject to change if he steps down earlier, etc.

infernalmachine - thanks for the clarification.

Didn't he just resign?

This question is set to suspend tonight, but according to the question's wording (requiring Olmert to "step down" as prime minister) the results will not be known for a few more weeks - almost a week until the elections, and then a week or two for all the deliberations that take place to choose a new prime-minister (in Israel, the prime-minister is NOT automatically the head of the party with the most votes, although this usually ends up being true).
Perhaps the question needs to be rephrased, to check the situation on suspend date, rather than waiting for the PM to actually end his PMship?

Can we settle this yet or whats going on?

For those of you wondering why this hasn't been settled yet: as the separate clarifications at the bottom of the details section indicate, this market will only settle as 'Yes' so long as there's an indictment while Olmert is still the PM. Now, under Israeli law, Olmert will continue to be PM until a new PM is sworn in (either Livni or Netanyahu) so it wouldn't be quite fair to settle this just yet, as there's the possibility that he could be indicted before leaving office.

Boy am I glad I cashed in on this question before the suspend date... In some questions, there's a big delay - possibly even weeks - between the suspend date and the settlement date. I think this is a very bad thing, and almost unwarrented. Usually, the market could have stayed open until the settlement date rather than artificially being suspended early, or alternatively the market could be settled on the suspend date, checking the question on the suspend date. In this case, both solutions would have worked. I hope that Hubdub will someday forbid question with this problem (big delay between the formal suspend date and the actual settlement date).

When I see a question with a big difference between suspend and settlement dates, currently I treat it in one of two ways: either avoid it completely, or cash in early.

nyharel,
I agree with you. often, though, it is not easy to see what is going to happen, or on occasion the suspension and settlement should take place in advance.
This question is a disaster, in this way. I'll flag the question to ask the cat-ed to un-suspend it until settlement will be possible.

@nyharel: while there may seem to be no call for it, we'll suspend early for many different reasons. For instance, suppose a market asks whether a certain person will win an election. Now, simple logic dictates that the market closes when the polls do; otherwise, folks would be placing wagers after an outcome was already conjectured, which is--at its very root--unfair. But say the race is too close to call, and the contestants go back and forth for days, weeks, or even months after the election before a clear winner is finally called. While that might seem like us 'artificially suspending a question early', it's really the only fair way it can be done. yes, we could simply settle the market based on exit polls, no matter how close the race, and we'd probably be safe. But we wouldn't *necessarily* be; projections are notoriously fallible. So, while we make every effort to settle accurately and quickly, the former will trump the latter every time.

I think the translation of that last comment is: TIME TO BALE OUT! And that's what I am doing...

ahhh I lost 4k as soon as you bailed
lol sucks

pidk777, no he just created more opportunity for the rest us to invest :-)

any day now....

Yea, any day now. I've got H$1,600 tied up in this one.

Former Israeli prime minister Olmert indicted

Israeli legal authorities have indicted former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert on corruption charges.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ic6RWeorIMHJ_dmXOp7pIN3VWKiwD9AD87R00

Please see:
http://www.hubdub.com/m51959/Will_Ehud_Olmert_be_found_guilty