Intelligence of the Masses

One of the more cutting edge frontiers of studies in finance (or at least highlighted) is the use of markets to predict the outcomes of different phenomena.

The classical example is the University of Iowa where they allow people to take bets on which politicians they think are going to win, thus resulting in "stock prices" for different candidates.

Some of the evidence points to the masses (read-the people) are better predictors and forecasters than the alleged "experts" as it is probably better to have a million minds working on a project than just a handful of doctorates.

Of course, this is nothing new as we've been using markets to predict the outcome of stocks for centuries. But what I get a kick out of is how nobody seems to point this out when leftists are elected into office or perhaps NOT elected into office.

Most recently Mexico looks to have elected Calderon over Obrador, the free-marketeer against the socialist. This resulted in Mexican stock markets rallying about 3% on the news, and continuing their rally today;

Of course this is common sense that the markets, which are based on profits, economic growth, sales, etc., would respond positively to a capitalist winning the presidential election. But what I get a kick out of is how nobody points out just what a slap in the face this is to leftists across the globe. That when people are allowed to invest their money and they have to put it down somewhere in a free market, such as the stock markets, they prefer the capitalist crowd. It's the masses telling the left, "socialism sucks, your policies would result in lower profits, confiscated business assets, lower sales, lower economic growth and all other things that would naturally bring down the markets and make our lives sucky."

What would ultimately prove my point would be to have a chart of the Bolivian stock markets when Morales was elected in Bolivia. And I fully had intended to find a chart and post it here.

Alas, it seems that I am asking too much of a small, socialist country for their stock exchange seems to have absolutely NO INFORMATION ON THEIR WEB SITE! Heck, not even a chart! Not to mention they don't even bother translating it into different languages.

So I am forced to speculate;

HAD Bolivia had a fully functioning stock market

WHICH represented actual stock prices

I WOULD BET A MILLION BOLIVIAN PESOS (read- 3 cents) THAT IT WOULD HAVE TANKED!

Anybody got a line of a good Bolivian chart?