Dear George,

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

Here&#8217-s the perfect opportunity to ask you the &#8220-question that kills&#8221-:

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&#8217-s the added value of the political election prediction markets over the poll aggregators?

Can you cite one prediction market (other than the &#8220-who&#8217-s gonna become president?&#8221- 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 &#8212-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/