Cass Sunstein:

[&#8230-] Some people are now doubting not only the prediction markets but also the polls, saying that no one knows anything, and that anything is as likely as anything else. Don&#8217-t believe it. To be sure, we are continuing to obtain information about how prediction markets perform and when they do well and poorly. Perhaps they will turn out to be less reliable than they seem &#8212- and in all likelihood, we will obtain a better understanding of when they work. And of course no one has a crystal ball. But the polls are generally pretty good &#8212- and if you want to have a sense of the probabilities, you&#8217-d probably do best to consult Intrade.

Thanks to Stephen Bass for the link.

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

• Red Herring’s list of the top 100 North-American high-tech startups includes Inkling Markets —but not NewsFutures, Consensus Point, or Xpree.
• Professor Koleman Strumpf explains the prediction markets to the countryland people.
• Professor Koleman Strumpf tells CNN that a prediction market, by essence, can’t predict an upset.
• Time magazine interview the 2 BetFair-Tradefair co-founders, and not a single time do they pronounce the magic words, “prediction markets”.
• One Deep Throat told me that this VC firm might have been connected with the Irish prediction exchange, at inception.
• BetFair Rapid = BetFair’s standalone, local, PC-based, order-entry software for prediction markets
• Michael Moore tells the Democratic people to go Barack Obama in Pennsylvania (a two-tier state), but the polls and the prediction markets tell us that that won’t do the trick.