29 July 2003

The Pentagon, in defending the program, said such futures trading had proven effective in predicting other events like oil prices, elections and movie ticket sales.

"Research indicates that markets are extremely efficient, effective and timely aggregators of dispersed and even hidden information," the Defense Department said in a statement. "Futures markets have proven themselves to be good at predicting such things as elections results; they are often better than expert opinions."

No, this isn't some crackpot at www.iamamoron.org writing this.  This is an actual quote from the Defense Department.  We now have empirical evidence showing that sales of tickets to Terminator 3 and terrorist activities can be predicted in the same way.

According to descriptions given to Congress, available at the Web site and provided by the two senators, traders who register would deposit money into an account similar to a stock account and win or lose money based on predicting events.

"For instance," Mr. Wyden [Ron Wyden of Oregon] said, "you may think early on that Prime Minister X is going to be assassinated. So you buy the futures contracts for 5 cents each. As more people begin to think the person's going to be assassinated, the cost of the contract could go up, to 50 cents.

"The payoff if he's assassinated is $1 per future. So if it comes to pass, and those who bought at 5 cents make 95 cents. Those who bought at 50 cents make 50 cents."

I'm sure Prime Minister X would be thrilled to find out that the U.S. government is selling futures on his getting whacked.  Should make dinner conversation at the X household rather interesting.

The senators also suggested that terrorists could participate because the traders' identities will be unknown.

"This appears to encourage terrorists to participate, either to profit from their terrorist activities or to bet against them in order to mislead U.S. intelligence authorities," they said in a letter to Admiral Poindexter, the director of the Terrorism Information Awareness Office, which the opponents said had developed the idea.

Yes, and it encourages the promotion of the United States government as a bunch of dumbfucks who shouldn't have the remote control to the television, let alone the political machinery of the greatest country on the planet.

And in case you weren't reading, this is a REAL futures trading proposition, with REAL MONEY.  "Hey honey, we're going on vacation!  I had futures on that dirty bomb that al Qaeda set off in London!  We're going to Tahiti!"

If this was in Vegas, the whole country would have blown a collective headpipe.  But this isn't Caesar's, it's our own gubmint.

There was a time, about a year ago, that I was actually delusional enough to believe that what the government was doing made some sort of sense, that maybe, just maybe, they were going to do things right for a change.  What a refreshing realization that they're just as screwed up as ever.  Don't forget the that is a government that, since 11 September 2001, has failed to capture Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, Saddam Hussein, get control over Iraq, and stop al Qaeda.  Sure, we've taken 3 million pairs of scissors from people like your grandmother, but the government's idea of protecting the bridges in New York is to put one cop standing at the on-ramp watching cars.  That's assuming that he's actually standing, and not sitting in his car reading the paper.  Golly, I feel safe.

How about starting a futures website on when you assholes are going to catch any of those guys?

UPDATE:  31 July 2003

The Pentagon official who oversaw the development of a plan for the military to operate a terrorist futures-trading market is resigning under pressure, a senior defense official said today.

John M. Poindexter, a retired rear admiral who was President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser, is stepping down ``in the next few weeks,'' the official said, following disclosure of a proposal that outraged lawmakers and embarrassed senior Pentagon officials. The plan was to create in essence an online betting parlor that would have rewarded investors who forecast terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups.

While Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld did not personally dismiss Admiral Poindexter, the defense official said, Mr. Rumsfeld agreed that the admiral's credibility was shot and it was time for him to go.

``It's fair to say that the secretary understood what Admiral Poindexter understands, which is that it's difficult for any work that he might be associated with to receive a dispassionate hearing,'' said the official, who spoke to a group of reporters at the Pentagon today on the condition of anonymity.

Admiral Poindexter first gained notoriety in the Iran-contra scandal during the Reagan administration, and more recently he oversaw a Pentagon program that proposed spying electronically on Americans to monitor potential terrorists.

Under that plan, Admiral Poindexter envisioned a program of sweeping electronic surveillance as a way of forestalling terrorism by tapping into computer databases to collect medical, travel, credit and financial records.

The current furor centered on an initiative called Policy Analysis Market. Under the plan, traders were to be able to begin registering on Friday to trade futures on developments in the Middle East as of Oct. 1 on a Web site of the Policy Analysis Market, which the Pentagon was operating with private partners.

``We've had a couple of programs of varying degrees of merit that have been seen as certainly as unorthodox,'' the defense official said today. ``It's cutting edge and beyond that in some cases perhaps.''

The official praised Admiral Poindexter for his ``very creative intellect,'' but said it was highly doubtful that the Pentagon would seek his advice as a consultant in the future.

For those of you who don't remember way back when, Poindexter was the guy who had a photographic memory who made the phrase "I don't recall" a household phrase during the Iran-Contra affair.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.