For all the expert opinions that cable news and radio talk shows showcase, one must wonder whether those Pulitzer Prize winning journalists, Nobel laureates, and Ivy League professors would be willing to put their money where their mouths are.

Well, that's exactly what this cool, little site Intrade.com allows its registered users to do.

Intrade.com is a political and financial futures market website. Call it, gambling for the elite. On this site, users are buyers and sellers of securities called derivatives (think of them as second cousins of stocks) that are based on the contingency of political and financial events happening such as

• Whether Sarah Palin will announce a run for President before December 31, 2011-- 58% Chance that She Will

• Whether a Democratic Party candidate will win the presidential election in 2012-- 57.5% Chance that a Democrat Will Win

• Whether the US economy will fall into a recession during 2011-- 15.1% Chance that a Recession Will Happen (as of my writing this post)

What’s really interesting about a site like this is that it shows what the market predicts about the future. As the latest news comes out of the White House or North Korea engages in a second shelling of its neighbor to the south, the price of the derivatives— the predictions— change in response in real-time. This way, you can get behind all of the blah, blah, blah of the pundits and see what new news really means.