Futures.

This is coolbert:

Some of you may remember my previous post of Sunday, September 11, 2005 dealing with the proposed future markets in terrorist incidents. A market [Policy Analysis Market]that would "trade" in futures. Predictions that an event ofa terrorist nature was going to occur or not occur would be "traded" as would conventional futures on say a commodities market.

And how this "market", a proposal by DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration], was shot down by a group of very liberal senators before it could even get off the ground. Reasoning on the part of SOME was that a concept was "immoral".

Is a non-entity from the U.S. governments standpoint.

It was suggested that such a market could exist,
but in PRIVATE hands. And this was proposed
and a concern I believe out of England had a web site
up and going for this purpose. But it seems nothing ever came of
this.

Well, it does seem that there IS a web site up and going for
future predictions. NOT only of terrorist events, but events of
international portent too. You can, it seems may a futures
prediction on ALMOST any event.

Go here to see the web site.

Go here to see the entire StrategyPage web site. Excellent web site for all those interested in the military and things military.

Advertised as:

StrategyPage's Prediction Market
"Many minds make quick work of uncertainty."

From the types of predictions made, you get a sense of what this
"futures" market is all about. Predictions such as:

"A major official of the EU or any European country will lose his
or her job for publicly denying the Holocaust or praising Nazi
Germany."

"A Hurricane hits the Iberian Peninsula during the 2006 Atlantic
Hurricane Season."

"A Democrat filibuster will succeed in forcing the withdrawal of
Samuel "Scalito" Alito's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court."

"Diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Venezuela will be
severed."

This is a notional futures trading web site.
NOT really trading real futures with real money.
Is "play money" sort of stuff. Paper trading at
the virtual level with a great degree of sophistication.
You have an account, buy or sell futures. If you are correct
about the prediction, you make money, if not correct,
you lose money. OR, if you have "sold short"
[a stock trading term and concept that most folks
find hard to believe is true], you win and make money by
the prediction NOT COMING TRUE!!

This is good stuff!! Entertainment and serious at the same time.
This site says that it is FREE for now, but
in November they will charge for trading. I am not sure
what November they are talking about?In my opinion,
to charge for the virtual trading would be a mistake.
That sort of thing on the web turns a lot of folks off.
One very impressive and attractive feature of the WWW is the
ability of the average person to get things that in the past were
once available only to the few, and then at a big cost.

And the site has an association with Tom Clancy.

The great novelist.

That of itself is indicative of the seriousness of
this virtual enterprise.

Tom Clancy is a man that in addition to be a novelist, is a man who
IS also a consultant/advisor/etc. to the military.

If the effort to do virtual trading in "terrorist futures" WILL NOT be
done by the government, then private concerns, backed by the resources
of someone like Tom Clancy can do the job. NOTHING wrong with that!!

coolbert.