Comment Text:
The Commission to take the strongest regulatory action possible regarding event contract derivatives traded on prediction markets. Prediction markets raise serious concerns about market integrity, insider trading, and the commodification of events that should remain outside the realm of financial speculation. Event contracts that allow wagering on military operations, foreign policy decisions, terrorism, assassination, or other government actions create unacceptable risks because individuals with nonpublic information about those decisions have both the opportunity and financial incentive to exploit that information. When citizens perceive that government decisions may be influenced by private financial interests, it erodes public trust.
Gambling is bad enough but profiting on such important government policy and life and death crises through wagering is abhorrent and unacceptable.
