Congrats for the launch of AskMarkets. Best wishes to your prediction exchange and consulting firm.

Here’s the perfect opportunity to ask you the “question that kills”:

What was the social utility of the political election prediction markets during the 2008 campaign?

In other words, why should the media have informed people about the InTrade probabilities at a time Nate Silver did a near-perfect job forecasting the 2008 US elections?

What’s the added value of the political election prediction markets over the poll aggregators?

Can you cite one prediction market (other than the “who’s gonna become president?” prediction market) that has a high social utility?

Each time I ask this question to one of the prediction market luminaries (or so they think they are), I get back the same glance I would get from a dead trout —so I would appreciate if you could attempt to answer my question by publishing a blog post on Midas Oracle.

Best regards,

Chris Masse, bombastic blogger

http://www.midasoracle.org/