Business Week (mirror at Forbes):

FBI Assistant Director Mark J. Mershon said the multibillion-dollar online gambling industry was &#8220-a colossal criminal enterprise masquerading as legitimate business.&#8221-

Does the U.S. government put real-money prediction exchanges (e.g., TradeSports-InTrade) in the perimeter of the &#8220-gambling industry&#8221-? If yes, then TradeSports-InTrade is dead on arrival (D.O.A.). If not, as stated by TEN CEO John Delaney (who believes that they are after bookmakers and sportsbooks, only), then what we need is a statement from the U.S. government that it won&#8217-t touch the offshore, real-money prediction exchanges.

In the absence of such an exoneration, is it rational to predict the death of TradeSports-InTrade? If the U.S. government goes after TEN&#8217-s American shareholders (venture capitalists and angel investors), they will fly away like frightened pigeons &#8212-if that&#8217-s not done already (think &#8220-re-organization&#8221-). I may be wrong but I believe that TEN is not yet profitable &#8212-especially after the killing of their financial prediction markets, following the CFTC fine.

All this is very sad for us who believe in real-money prediction markets.

The arrest of TEN CEO John Delaney on U.S. soil (in a phone-booth conference room, for instance) could be interesting in that it would generate a wave of supportive statements from a bunch of American economists &#8212-including some of the IEM gang members (e.g., Ms. Berg). We could have a repetition of the DARPA&#8217-s FutureMAP PAM effect &#8212-a controversy on real-money prediction markets hitting the print Press, which, short-term, we would lose, but which, long term, would be beneficial to the whole industry. The economists yelling &#8220-fire&#8221- would attract the attention of the private decision makers reading the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and the next step would be to turn these prospects into clients of prediction market software vendors.