Michael Selig

Well, I think we're really at this unique, pivotal moment in our history where

Many have lost faith in traditional news media and traditional information sources.

People are trusting and relying on social media, prediction markets, Twitter, all sorts of new media sources.

And that's not a bad thing.

I think as Americans, we need to explore different avenues for getting our information.

But prediction markets aren't new.

They've been around for a long time.

New exchanges are offering all manner of new informational products from predicting sports to political events to the price of oil with all the activity going on in the Gulf.

So I think that's a good thing for society.

Well, people are hedging all sorts of different risks as a regulator.

It's not my job to tell them what to hedge and what not to hedge.

That said, some of these products maybe are more for speculation, more for entertainment.

The markets aren't designed just for hedgers or just for certain things that have a risk management aspect to them.

Derivatives are derivatives.

We have broad authority over derivatives, and we regulate the markets for derivatives.

Each exchange as an SRO has the responsibility to evaluate the products that it lists.

It has to ensure that those products are not readily susceptible to manipulation.

It certifies that to us as a regulator, and we review that application to go and list and self-certify a product.

So a lot of the responsibility, of course, is on the exchanges to evaluate products.

We're not doing that as a kind of merit-based regulator where we're picking winners and losers.