A Quick Update on the Republican Nomination Courtesy of Intrade

So admittedly, I haven’t looked at Intrade at about a week, so I can’t say exactly when this happened, but Mitt Romney now leads Rick Perry in odds of winning the nomination (~37%  for Romney versus ~35% for Rick Perry).  This is the first time Romney has led Perry as far as I know since Perry let it be known that he was in the running.

http://www.intrade.com/v4/home/

People don’t really know that much about monetary policy in general, but I’d like to think that Romney’s surge in popularity is at least in part a reaction to Perry’s attacks on Ben Bernanke. (People are certainly entitled to different views on monetary policy, and it is possible that the inflation hawks are right, but the comments about Bernanke really rubbed me the wrong way. Bernanke is a brilliant economist who’s opinions should always be respected even when you disagree with him.)

Oh, also, Michele Bachmann is now trading at 2.9% which puts her below Ron Paul’s 3.0%, so virtually no shot at being nominated is converging to no shot at being nominated rather quickly.

http://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/contract/?contractId=745285