> Tom Lehman wrote:
>
> >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!
So, paraphrasing David Byrne, in the future there will be nothing about which you can say, "there's no future in that."
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"