[ExI] Bad news for US customers of Intrade

[Adrian Tymes]

On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 12:39 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki
<rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 4:59 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The specific regulation - Dodd-Frank - was also intended to curb the
>> effect of speculation on commodity prices, for instance after oil
>> speculators kept getting $billions by such market manipulation,
>> which costs were largely passed on by oil companies in the form of,
>> e.g., higher gas prices.
>
> ### I have a question - do you approve of these regulations?

I think they do more good than harm, especially for their intended
purpose, but like most complex regulations, they are imperfect and
have some corrupt loopholes.

But for example, it created the Financial Stability Oversight Council
and the Office of Financial Research, who might be quite willing to
listen to our speculations on existential risk and perhaps promote
our advice as policy, so long as we phrase things to them in a
financial context.  For instance, if we can point out the impact of
increasing life expectancy on the US financial system, and point
out that radical life extension would greatly increase the number of
players who would be aware of the problems of risky financial
endeavors (having been burned themselves) and act as a natural
counter, they may well promote it.  Note that their emphasis is on
risk identification and reduction, so it would behoove one of us with
credentials (i.e., someone they'll listen to) to talk them into adopting
the proactionary principle instead of the precautionary.

But mostly it just tries to get big banks to do the jobs they promised
to do, rather than gambling all the money they've been trusted with.
That, on the balance, does more good than harm.