He cant mess with the Iowa market, because the max you can bet is $500.  He's messing with Tradesports.com in Ireland.

It's not like hitting a CNN poll.  You have to fill out an account form and send in a check via snail mail.

Forgive my ignorance.

How does this effect how people here will vote?

"a scheme to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt among Bush supporters, and to create the false impression of winning momentum for John Kerry."

To clarify my above question:  

I,  like most people, have never heard of any of these "futures markets" concerning the presidential race.

Quoted: "a scheme to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt among Bush supporters, and to create the false impression of winning momentum for John Kerry." To clarify my above question:   I,  like most people, have never heard of any of these "futures markets" concerning the presidential race.

In theory, markets are the best possible way to gauge what something is worth and what peoples' expectations about the future are.  There is no better way to assess what a commodity or security is worth than to let a market of thousands of actors using all the information possible to all of them determine the price. It's the whole "Money talks, and bullshit walks" principle in action.  You may want Kerry to win, but according to everything you know Bush is going to win, you're going to place your money accordingly.

Back in the late 19th century and until the 1940's, there were betting pools on election outcomes in American presidential races.  The market theory proved amazingly true, and these became very reliable determinants of election outcomes.

With the advent of the internet net, both professional bookies and academics that study politics, economics and markets are reviving the practice of betting on elections, using contrived futures markets just for that purpose.  Bets rise and fall in value in reation to developments in populatity and events during the election.

Donald Luskin, a free market ideologue, suspects pro-Kerry billionaire speculator is attempting to game the system to deceive the market and send it wrong signals to his side's advantage.  Who knows what the fuck is going on.

Thanks.

I got most of that part already, I just didn't think this was mainstream enough to effect anything at this point.  It's mostly up to the undecided voters at this point, and I don't think most will know or care about this.

I personally like to visit the bookmakers online gambling houses  .

Thanks for the info.


Ugly

Quoted: I got most of that part already, I just didn't think this was mainstream enough to effect anything at this point.  It's mostly up to the undecided voters at this point, and I don't think most will know or care about this.

I've read research that most undecided voters break for whoever is ahead the last weekend before the election.  Makes sense to me, since whoever is still undecided at this point is a real flake and I could see them voting for the guy "everyone else is voting for".

Thus Soros' attempt to create the impression that Kerry has momentum could be an effective way to manipulate the system.

Plus, Soros is a real bad actor, a dangerous neo-communist.  I'd be suspicious of anything he does.

For those of you whoe have been following financial and, particularly, foreign exchange markets for a while.  Remember when Soros shorted the UK pound?  BAsically going head to head, trying to force it down?  They were within days, by some accounts, of a currency collapse.  I truly am surprised that the British didn't have SAS arrange an accident for Soros.  I guess it shows the Queen is a better person than I.  If someone tried to destroy the lifeblood of my nation and, wreck the livelihoods of working people who had no means of dealing with it (they are not "at the table" in FOREX markets), I'd see to it that they didn't do anything any more.  

Quoted: For those of you whoe have been following financial and, particularly, foreign exchange markets for a while.  Remember when Soros shorted the UK pound?  BAsically going head to head, trying to force it down?  They were within days, by some accounts, of a currency collapse.  I truly am surprised that the British didn't have SAS arrange an accident for Soros.  I guess it shows the Queen is a better person than I.  If someone tried to destroy the lifeblood of my nation and, wreck the livelihoods of working people who had no means of dealing with it (they are not "at the table" in FOREX markets), I'd see to it that they didn't do anything any more.

No, Soros just saw the inevitible and put himself into a position to profit from it.

"SPECULATE" comes from the Latin root for "To Observe".  Speculation, at it's best, is when you see a situation that cannot but happen. When a market is ridiculously over or underpriced, or, in the Bank of England's case, when the central bank is furiously spending limited reserves to prop up an overpriced currency (I dont know the details about the BOE/Pound/Soros speculation, but this is usually what he does) and you can see that they can't keep it up forever.  

My guess is that interest rates fell really hard in the UK, but the pound failed to depreciate commensurately.  Soros smelled a rat, and bet it couldn't be sustained.  This is what I am guessing, I'll read about it now.

From Gregory Millman's book, The Vandals' Crown

That the state has lost control over its financial markets, however, does not mean that individual speculators have gained control. What has occurred in the markets is a diffusion of power to the point where power, in any meaningful sense, hardly exists. There is a distinction worth making between small and large economies. Any one of a dozen or so speculators in New York City prob?ably could wreak havoc with the New Zealand dollar. And there is not a lot New Zealand can do about it, unless the speculator has some stake in maintaining good relations with the Antipodes. But the embarrassing truth is that destroying the New Zealand dollar is, for a big speculator, a bit like killing a porcupine for its meat. Unless you are very hungry, it is probably not worth the trouble.

The British pound is another matter. The speculation against the pound in 1992 that drove it out of the European Monetary System illustrates the gap between what actually happens in the markets and what people -- even senior politicians -- believe is happening. To this day the received wisdom in British politics is that the pound was collapsed by George Soros. This view is wrong in several respects. First, even as Soros' reputation as a market genius grew, he was removing himself from the market. The decision to sell the pound short was actually made by his colleague, Stanley Druckenmiller. Second, it was not a lone battle; many other speculators were involved. Third, and most importantly, the sum of the speculators' wagers was dwarfed by the trading of large corporations needing to hedge their exchange rate exposure. Millman explains in persuasive detail that currency speculators rode the corporate sales of British pounds like surfers catching a wave. No corporation held sufficient power, or sufficient ambition, to move a market very far. Rather, they acted as a faceless group, exchanging their sterling for dollars, marks, and yen to avoid the incipient collapse of the pound. It was an old?fashioned run on the currency. Once enough people believed that the pound would collapse, it did.