Man: If traders are more well-informed than U.S. intelligence services, we have a big problem.I guess we have...

I think the terror futures would make binary payment on some definition of a major international terrorist event, possibly with subcategories. Another approach would be to construct a terrorism index with weighted contributions from all sorts of events, and trade futures on it.Another problem is how to price a future on blowing up the futures exchange.

Yes, one would not expect a terrorism exchange to shut down for a week after an attack would the 'price of terrorist attack' have risen before Sep 11th and why?are there any good papers on the predictive effects of markets? (preferably non technical)Quote I heard on the radio: "if the boffins that invented this idea of predicting terrorist attacks couldn't predict the reaction from the public they do need all the help they can get?

Look what u did. The grand project has been shelved because of your wisecracks.

No, it was a glitch in the Matrix. I had to fix it. Won't happen again. Promise. I'm about to delete Entity.US.Gov.Secret.TIA.Regards,NoniusMatrix Admininstrator

to make no mention of the fact that the spectrum of contracts offered reflect the political bent of the exchange operator (a future on the assassination of arafat, sure, but of sharon or bush, i think not...). opinion futures with some identifiable underlying economic value (there was some report out of Stanford that discussed the correlation between the S&P and futures on Hussein being deposed which were listed on Tradesports) are probably a good idea, but to target 10,000 users with a pre-existing bias toward policy assessment, with the hope that their collective judgement will reveal earlier warning signals than our "cash market" intelligence agencies can, to quote Man, is a problem. the bigger problem might be convergence risk near settlement on the bio-weapon attack futures...

Anyone want Sep03 Cheney coronaries? How 'bout Oct04 Clinton hummers?Matrix admin, please create.

C3,Sorry. After extensive review, we have decide that Entity.US.Gov is too buggy and needs to be rewritten entirely. We won't be adding anything until we have completely rebuilt it.NoniusMatrix Administrator

Well, it turns out the project is not dead! The futures exchange idea got nixed, so DARPA is implementing Plan B, Terrorist Survivor. Twelve incarcerated terrorists of different stripes will be flown to an undisclosed location and ordered to destroy an undisclosed target. Each week, the group will vote on one member to murder. The final survivor gets a full pardon if the mission is successful.DARPA figures that the identity of the winning terrorist will be a good predictor of which group we should worry most about. Also, the TV revenues should free the Agency from Congressional oversight.

That's right Aaron.I have been selected as one of the original twelve. MobPsycho has also been selected.Let the games begin.

QuoteOriginally posted by: Aaron. Each week, the group will vote on one member to murder. Some may need a crash course in democracy first...

Does anyone know why these agencies are called "intelligence" agancies?

QuoteOriginally posted by: AaronThere are a lot of interesting ideas here, it's too bad only idiots are commenting about it in public.There is some intelligent commentary in the Op-Ed page of today's (July 31) New York Times.

I don't think that the commentary in the times was that informed. The first jack-ass thought that it was good because it resolves his pent-up feeling over Iran-Contra? Again, they typified the gut immediate responses that 1) it is disgusting and 2) people will make money by contributing. There was only one op/ed that considered pros and cons and was obviously done by someone who considered less their wordsmithing, and more the content and its forethought. People weren't this upset with cat bonds? What about insurance fraud? If insurance is an option on a claim, and I can insure life, limbs, bridges, kidnappings, how far removed is keeping the counterparty the same and incresing the number of claims on the same thing?