>Anyone caught the Solomon,Smith, Barney TV ad in which one of the takes
>suggests "futures" in professional athletes? What's next futures in
>race horses? How about a future on who wins the Super Bowl?
Why not? Doesn't classical market theory suggest that problems with markets can be solved by creating new ones? That the only problem with the market system is its incompleteness? If we could sell a future against the possibility of heartburn after my Vietnamese basil chicken lunch, it'd offset the cost of Pepcid! Robert Shiller - an economist who made himself famous by demonstrating the excess volatility of the stock market (i.e., its price swings are many times wider than underlying profits or dividend growth would warrant) - has a very silly book in which he argues for futures markets in GDP statistics and housing prices and just about anything else we could imagine. One of the Chicago exchanges has proposed a futures contract in the number of personal bankruptcy filings - that's a nice start. Onward to the marketization of everything!
Doug