Bad bets

Nate Silver has uncovered a "rogue trader" trying to manipulate the Intrade presidential election futures markets. The trader has been buying massive amounts of McCain-to-win contracts. Paul Krugman thinks this is an attempt to make McCain look more popular than he really is.

But that seems unlikely to me. First of all, the Iowa Futures market and other well-known odds markets will be unchanged - the rogue trader can't control all markets at once. Second of all, the rogue trader has also placed massive amounts of money on Hillary Clinton to win it all.

In other words, he's not betting on Obama to lose. He's betting on Obama to get assassinated in the next two and a half weeks.