PENTAGON ABANDONS TERROR FUTURES MARKET

[newsguyatl]

BC-APNewsAlert
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon's plan to establish a futures
market to predict terrorist acts will be abandoned, Senate Armed
Services Committee chairman says.

--FROM WIRES, NO LINK YET

[Itascapark]

1. No they won't...

They all ready have one. It's called the Carlye Group.

[0007]

2. Aw fuck! where can a guy make a decent laydown?

I was gonna make a big wager on an accident that would take two out.

Maybe Lloyds of London is making book these days, 'eh?

[mjb4]

3. Is this from the onion?

did condi mastermind this? If there were any WORD from the CIA not to promote this idea, we WOULD NOT hAVE. It is the CIA's fault!

[demnan]

4. Bush's buddy Osama

is going to be disappointed about this.

[saigon68]

5. NICE TRIAL BALLOON

Wonder what the person who thought this one up was smoking????

[DemoTex]

8. I heard it was the felononious John Poindexter (DARPA)

I cannot believe that he is being paid to come up with this kind of shit.

[Julien Sorel]

10. It sounds like Wolfowitz to me.

He has a quasi-mathematics background, and this was obviously dreamed up by someone who has at least a partial understanding of the mathematical side of game theory, but doesn't understand how markets work, particularly financial markets, where a high degree of public confidence is necessary for them to work at all.

This is the single most insane proposal I've seen in the realm of public policy. It's so insane, so obviously doomed from the start from every angle, public acceptance as well as practicality, that it has to be mis-direction. Any low-level grad student in finance would have seen the problems with this idea from the second someone tossed it out in a brain storming session.

[dweller]

12. no, he said he had just learned of it this morning

reading the paper on the way to his meeting on Iraqi Reconstruction on Cspan1 now. :eyes:

Nelson (fla) asked if it was adm. Poindexter's idea?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=97643&mesg_id=97643&page=

dp

[rocktivity]

15. DEMO TEX! LONG TIME, NO POST!!!

Been out on another one of your "excursions"? Funny how you tend to pop up after a story like this breaks. Sure you don't dabble in the government operative market?

rocknation

[yellowcanine]

16. A pipe - John Poindexter

Brought to you by those fun-loving DARPA folks at the Pentagon headed by that cuddly old pipe-smoking John Poindexter. I guess they needed a project to replace the Total Information Awareness fiasco. Fact really is funnier than fiction with this maladministration. If Poindexter survives this, you know "He who must not be named" really is controlling the Bush Administration.

[psychopomp]

6. Just incredible

Somebody has to do a "hey, you remember when the PENTAGON was going to set up a futures market on CHAOS in the Middle East?" thread in, say, a year or two. This is too weird for me to accept as anything more than a waking dream brought on by sleep deprivation.

I can't believe I actually read a headline like that in my lifetime. This has got to be part of some kind of mass-hypnosis effort.:tinfoilhat:

edit: added "part of":tinfoilhat::tinfoilhat::tinfoilhat:

[Philosophy]

7. Office of Strategic Information redux?

Remember early last year when Rumsfeld wanted to set up that Pentagon department to spread disinformation, but then he supposedly shut it down before it was even started? Wait a second...maybe the announcement that the disinformation office was shut down was the first piece of disinformation produced by that office...and then the story that this terror futures market was shut down is just another piece of their disinformation. It's all falling into place now... :tinfoilhat:

[The Night Owl]

9. I had that same thought...

... when I first heard that they were eliminating that office.

With the current administration, anything is possible... that is where we are at in 2003.

[short bus president]

11. link

http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=2AE95D77-D19A-4518-8DA7F252DE27AA87

[Bossy Monkey]

19. AP link:

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TERROR_MARKET?SITE=SCCOL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[bluestateguy]

13. Hmmmmm

I'm sure the Pentagon will quietly fund the same kind of project through a private webmaster instead.

[joshcryer]

14. Just like TIPS.

Man, this admin can't do anything right... :)

[otohara]

17. New York Times Link

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/29/politics/29WIRE-PENT.html?hp

Pentagon Abandons Plan for Futures Market on Terror
By CARL HULSE


ASHINGTON, July 29 - The Pentagon office that proposed spying electronically on Americans to monitor potential terrorists has quickly abandoned an idea in which anonymous speculators would have bet on forecasting terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups in an online futures market.

Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee, said today that he had conferred with the program's director at the Pentagon, ``and we mutually agreed that this thing should be stopped.''

The senator's announcement - made during a confirmation hearing for retired Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, who has been nominated to be Army chief of staff - signaled the end of a program that was met with astonishment and derision almost from the moment it was disclosed.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz comfirmed the program's demise today. ``My understanding is it's going to be terminated,'' he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, according to Reuters.

[yellowcanine]

18. But it is only three words, what's the big deal?

Terror Futures Market is only three words. Why is everybody getting so upset? It is not as if Bush were lying to us by saying that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa or anything - uh - never mind.

[KoKo]

20. BBC Link, here about them nixing it. Ties to Britain in the scheme

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3106559.stm

The proposed scheme - called the Policy Analysis Market (PAM) - was
set up by a Pentagon unit known as the Defence Advanced Research
Projects Unit.

The market would have worked by getting traders to deposit money in
an account and using that to buy and sell contracts. They would have
made their money if a particular event actually happened.

Invitations had gone out online for an initial 1,000 traders to register on
1 August and the programme had been designed to start in October.

One of the organisations which provided data for the project was the
Economist Intelligence Unit in London.

Speaking before the plan was abandoned, its Director of Risk Services,
Merli Baroudi, told BBC News Online: "It is trying to gather insights of
people in a cost effective way.

"Markets have done this in economics for some time and the Iowa
Electronic Markets does it for US presidential elections, so it is not really
novel."

[ElementaryPenguin]

21. OMG!!! This - coupled with our kidnaping families for intelligence proves

WE HAVE FUCKING GONE INSANE!!! EVEN HITLER DIDN'T DO THIS SHIT!!!

[Divernan]

22. Very easy to rig such a small futures market.

NT

[umcwb]

23. Kick, n/t

[Paragon]

24. http://www.policyanalysismarket.org/

It's now a blank white page.

[Must_B_Free]

25. I have the backgroung gif that they were most ashamed of

it it disappeared earliest.

If anyone will host I will send - it's really appaling graphic.

"US Military Deaths" is one of the figures they are planning on gambling on.

Terror is set explode in Q4 of 03. Arafat will be assassinated in Q1 of 04.

[NYC]

27. I didn't get that one.

If you get someone to host it, let me know. I got screen shots of some of the rest of it, including the DARPA logo and admission of participation.

Send me a DU mail if your picture gets posted somewhere. I think we still need to save this.

Also, I think the name will be changed, and they will be quiet about continuing this gambling venture.

[robbedvoter]

28. Hang on to these predictions. We may need to revisit them

Self fulfilling prophecies would be the way the press would put it.

[Not a robought]

31. I'll host the graphic

I'll PM you my email and you can send it to me there.

[bpilgrim]

32. i have the whole site here...

http://new.globalfreepress.com/sites/www.policyanalysismarket.org/index.html

email the pic in case i missed it to [e-mail]

peace

[DoYouEverWonder]

33. Here's two sites that can help you out

http://globalfreepress.org/

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/news/scoops.html

Both of these sites will host documents and images. Love to see what you've got?

[baldguy]

26. A Futures Market for mayhen, death and suffering?

Why don't they just break into a hospital terminal ward and play dice on the cancer patient's chests?

This idea is totally obscene and reprehensible - ethically, morally, philosophically and legally. Had to come from a Republican.

[Sterling]

29. Put options after 9-11 anyone?

Why has nobody made the connection yet? It was widely reported right after 9-11 that there were abnormal trades on the companies affected by the attacks.

They stopped reporting on this after the trail lead back to banks known to work with elements within the US government and intelligence community.

This sounds like an attempt to cover for the insider trading on 9-11.

[peacetalksforall]

35. I am shocked that

there are only 33 messages about this on this thread and only 1 person who has related this to the put options.

If anyone was writing a Hollywood script they would create a little plot and mystery by weaving a connection between the people who arranged the put options and the people who thought this up. Perhaps this is an idea that they came up with to get half of the profits (5 mil?) that couldn't be collected on the put options because of the attention. The other half (?) was collected and we don't know one darn thing about it two years later.

Isn't anyone wondering why the only investigations that we are hearing about it an investigation of our intelligence departments and NOTHING about the put options, the internal stuff from the airlines specifically control tower to aircraft, the exact model of the aircraft that crashed into the Pentagon and where it went and a dozen or more connected unanswered and unaddressed issues.

I'm fed up hearing the same crap repeated ad nauseum about the CIA and FBI. We are sidetracked.

Isn't anyone going to express more outrage over this diabolic idea? The has to be most vile plot in the history of man.

[ReadTomPaine]

30. Even Tucker Carlson called it ridiculous…

… during Crossfire this afternoon. The best he could say was that it was ‘imaginative’.

[jeanmarc]

34. 'Imaginative' is the spin nt

[lazarus]

36. dupe

same time, just picked the one on top, please continue here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=40321&mesg_id=40321