  A big thanks to Slate for taking the time to explain why we really could benefit from the urlLink Pentagon Futures Market . The market has been at the center of a political firestorm for the past couple of days... with Congressmen and media pundits lining up to denounce it... calling it "harebrained" and "offensive. " As usual, it was a lot of bluster... signifying nothing. The major points of the Slate article: 1) Markets are surprisingly good at predicting events-- from Presidential elections to the fall of Saddam Hussein. The often outperform the experts. 2) The collective judgment of traders is often quite accurate because marketing are particularly good at uncovering and aggregating pieces of information. 3) Traders have no other incentive than making the right decision... no political pressures, institutional biases. The real argument, of course, is whether it's moral to make money on predictions that might include terrorist attacks or government coups. But last time I checked, we were paying CIA specialists to analyze the terrorist threat. Last time I checked, we were also paying Al Qaeda informants to pass along information which might help us predict when and where the next attack will come.
Besides, what we've been learning recently is that intelligence can go wrong when it's subject to political and bureaucratic pressures. Politically, there was not much that could be done once the proposed market was framed as a way to make money off of terrorist acts. But shame on the Congressmen who were too cowardly to defend the market for what it is and can accomplish.
And shame on the media, which, as happens too often, simply reported what it was told without bothering to ask questions. I'm enjoying using some of my spare time to catch up on goings-on among my weblog friends... urlLink you , urlLink you and urlLink you among many others. It's been a long couple of months trying to get things wrapped up but now the long expected moment has arrived and passed, I can bask in it and revel in the new-found sense of space. 
