Bookies in Britain have suspended betting on the “do” side of the proposition as to whether Greece leaves the Euro Zone. Ladbrokes gave up cutting the odds on a Greek departure and has stopped taking action. “It is safer for us to suspend betting than to keep cutting the odds,” a spokesman for Ladbrokes told CNBC. “We have been slashing the odds repeatedly over the last few days.”
“If we get some positive news we will open the book again,” he said.
Alexis Tsipras, the head Greece’s Radical Left Coalition (now that’s left), has been providing the sound bites that have punters hitting the windows hard, betting on a Greek euro exit stage left. Mr. Tsipras says the Greek bailout agreement is “null and void.” He refers to the austerity program as “barbaric.” “I fully disagree with what is at heart of the memorandum [austerity],” Tsipras said, adding that “further austerity will make us a third world country in the EU.”
Mr. Tsipras argues that the strong anti-austerity vote in Sunday’s election, which produced a hung parliament, stripped Greece’s bailout commitments of “political legitimacy.”
Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, CNBC’s goddess of all things Greek, reports, and Jennifer Parker writes,
Tsipras’s views are significant because a new poll on Thursday put him in first place to win snap elections if they are held in June. The elections may be necessary if none of the winners of Sunday’s elections are able to form a government so far.
For long-shot players, Ladbrokes is offering 33 to 1 odds that the euro ceases to exist by the end of this year. For those wanting more time, the odds are a prohibitive 5/6 that the euro is gone by the end of 2015. Ladbrokes is offering 4 to 1 that two countries leave the euro by the end of this year.
It is unknown at this writing if Tragedy of the Euro author Philipp Baggus has money down on any of these propositions.
