Intrade banned, a very bad sign for our future.

13 Responses to Intrade banned, a very bad sign for our future.

1. Endif says:

   November 26, 2012 at 8:16 pm

   http://buzz.money.cnn.com/2012/11/26/intrade-sued-by-cftc/

   But according to the CFTC, Intrade and TEN also allowed U.S. customers to buy and sell options contracts predicting the outcome of economic reports, when the price of gold would reach a certain level and how currencies behave, among other things.
   “It is against the law to solicit U.S. persons to buy and sell commodity options, even if they are called ‘prediction’ contracts, unless they are listed for trading and traded on a CFTC-registered exchange or unless legally exempt,” said David Meister, director of the CFTC’s division of enforcement, in a statement.

   OMG ITS THE SOVIET UNION ALL OVER AGAIN U GAIZ!!1

   Spare me.
   • Oleg Volk says:

     November 26, 2012 at 8:19 pm

     The rest of the article points out that the effort to join the exchange was denied.
   • Flint says:

     November 26, 2012 at 9:01 pm

     You might have a /slight/ point, if it were possible for them to get a license.

     But they were arbitrarily denied a license by some unaccountable bureaucrat. And then charged for operating without the license which they’d been denied.

     Yeah, pretty much exactly like a totalitarian socialist state.

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3. David Dyer-Bennet says:

   November 26, 2012 at 8:52 pm

   The chance that this decision had anything to do with suppressing information is exactly zero. The people making this decision won’t have even considered that issue. And the rules on commodity exchanges developed, as always, due to severe problems in the early days.
   • Oleg Volk says:

     November 26, 2012 at 8:55 pm

     Not sure that the ruling was designed to suppress information. The effect is exactly that and adds up to a bad picture. I think we are far from the dark days of 1971-73 but heading right back for them.
4. Ken Hagler says:

   November 27, 2012 at 12:50 am

   Here’s what the Reason Magazine blog has to say about the reason for this:

   we are doing this bullshit so that all the world may know we can and we will throw our weight around doing exactly this sort of bullshit!

   Note that Intrade isn’t even a US company–it’s in Ireland. So I guess that makes it the modern equivalent of the Soviet Union telling people in Poland what to do.
   • Sigivald says:

     November 27, 2012 at 3:34 pm

     Except that it’s not that.

     The US isn’t telling Intrade it can’t do whatever it wants in The Entire Rest Of The World.

     It’s telling it that it can’t do business in the United States, with American customers.

     I think it’s a stupid thing to do, but the analogy isn’t “the US is interfering in Ireland’s business!”
     • Oleg Volk says:

       November 27, 2012 at 3:36 pm

       So much for Americans before more free than the rest of the world. In some ways we are, in many others we aren’t.
5. LarryArnold says:

   November 27, 2012 at 1:15 am

   I agree, sort of. I think it was simply:
   innovative = not invented here = must be something wrong with it

   “The people making this decision won’t have even considered that issue.”

   If not, they should have.

   Note that the people on Intrade were not in fact trading commodities, any more than people who make paramutual bets are buying or selling horses. It looks to me like CFTC acted outside their jurisdiction.
   • Paul Koning says:

     November 28, 2012 at 12:04 pm

     *everything* CFTC does is outside its jurisdiction. See if you can find it in the Constitution. I don’t think so.

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7. Y. says:

   November 27, 2012 at 8:28 pm

   Inaccurate title, I believe.

   They forced Intrade to stop serving US citizens.

   The other 6.7 billion people are unaffected. And I believe those really into it will find some way of being involved by proxy…

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