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News > Print Edition > Inside the A Section
> Letters to the
Editor

The Pentagon's Ill-Conceived
Market

Thursday, August 7, 2003;
Page A20

The lament of professors Justin Wolfers and Eric Zitzewitz
[op-ed, July 31] over the termination of the Pentagon's "terrorism
futures market" rested on false premises.

Aside from the fact that it is disgusting to have our
government promoting wagering on whether and when a foreign leader
will be assassinated or how many U.S. soldiers will die, the
professors assume the tax-funded online betting parlor would produce
useful information that would save lives.

But the Pentagon's futures market invited manipulation,
either by those who wanted to win their bets or by those -- say,
actual terrorists -- who wished to mislead.

Yes, markets on occasion have predicted future events, but
they often fail to do that as well. Ask any former dot-com
billionaire whose billions evaporated or Enron employee whose
retirement fund nose-dived. No responsible public official would
make life-and-death policy decisions based on what markets have to
say at any given time.

The professors also sidestepped the moral question. It is
morally bankrupt for a government agency to make a profitable game
out of the deaths of American troops, heads of state and nuclear
missile attacks.

When Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and I revealed this plan, we
described it as immoral and stupid. The Pentagon at first tried to
defend it. Then, as protest mounted, it terminated it.

It's too bad the two professors are unable to see beyond
their academic dogma and recognize that this was a bizarre plan to
produce useless, tasteless and unreliable "information" at a cost of
millions of wasted tax dollars.

BYRON L. DORGAN

U.S. Senator (D-N.D.)

Washington

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