Futures Markets Everywhere

Futurists, soothsayers and plain old forecasters may have finally had it. We can now see the advent and spread of futures markets for almost any event for which enough betters can be found. One firm (www.newsfutures.com) now licenses the software whereby we can each create our own site to mediate bets on almost any forecast.

There will soon be enough such markets that arbitrage between them becomes attractive -- which will, in turn, make each of them a better source of information.

Hitch markets to broadband and good things happen. The more prescient get financial rewards and everyone else, including those on the sidelines, get to see the light sooner rather than later.