For viewers presently in the U.K. only —-alas. The Beeb won’-t show you the video if you are from the States or the F country. 
BetFairs political prediction markets on the BBC – [VIDEO]
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Tag Archives: Politics
Peter Schiff for President
The UK political prediction markets are starting to get fun.
The British Republicans (“-the Tories”-) have dipped a bit more at BetFair, yesterday, and everybody is wondering why. (See the first comment in the second link.) Expect Max Keiser to weight in. We are going to have fun this spring, I kind of feel that in the air. 
UPDATE: Bad poll for the Tories.
The sudden dip in March 16s InTrade ObamaCare prediction market was an intentional coup.
Allegedly, an idiot pressed the wrong button on March 16s InTrade ObamaCare prediction market. Do you buy it?
Here’s the most likely scenario as to what happened here:
Somebody had a decent short position. Say they had about 65 shares (the volume bars indicate that this was likely a <- 100 share transaction, ie, <- $5 worth of commissions for Intrade, so mentioning commissions / greed as a motivator is pure ignorance). They wanted to put up a buy of 65 shares at say 5%, so that if the price ever dips that low, they can close their short position and wind up with a nice profit. And then, big mistake, they hit sell instead of buy. The market plummets. Mystery solved. It’-s called human error.
UK political prediction markets at Smarkets
Health Care Reform Explained
American Health CAre Presentation
The Real Arithmetic Of The Health Care Reform
The Real Arithmetic Of The Health Care Reform –- NYT –- by a former CBO director.
Required reading for Paul Hewitt.
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ADDENDUM
More info on health care reform on Memeorandum, Politico and Slate.
In 1965, Congress said Medicare would cost $9 billion by 1990. In reality, it cost $67 billion -seven times more than the prediction.
Nate Silver: InTrade probability on ObamaCare is quite right.
I’-m not sure if you should particularly care about the little 5 or 10 point hedges (usually to the pessimistic side) that I’-ve periodically been recommending around the Intrade contract on the chances of reform passing. Even if you staffed a whole room full of the smartest vote-counters, modelers and analysts and had them work 24/7 on trying to beat the Intrade contract, I’-m not sure if they could come up with anything sufficiently rigorous to provide them with a real advantage. (That doesn’-t necessarily mean the market is “-efficient”-, but we’-ll save that conversation for another day.) But for what it’-s worth, the Intrade contract, which is trading at 75 percent right now, now looks about right to me or perhaps even a hair pessimistic.
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ADDENDUM
More info on health care reform on Memeorandum, Politico and Slate.