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Strategies & Market Trends : MDA - Market Direction Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brian P. who wrote (45442)	4/8/2000 6:14:00 PM
From: Joan Osland Graffius	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 99985

Brian, >>I'm amazed that people would set themselves up like this--but greed makes people do all sorts of things that are hard to imagine. I suspect we have a generation of people in this country that have learned that credit card debt is not a problem and there is not any serious consequences when they can not pay the interest on the debt. The economics of credit card debt is very different from margin debt, since credit card debt is a social welfare system where the interest is so high that it covers the finance companies risk, and makes a nice profit. Margin account economics are very different. I hope that the media covers some of the problems during the recent market volatility, because people need an education on the subject. The brokerage houses will not educate the clients since they make money on margin accounts as well as profits on the trading of the funds. They have the folks sign the paperwork and it is a buyer beware environment. I visited one of my full service brokers this week to take care of this years IRA contribution and they were busy working the margin accounts, and I live in a well educated area of Minneapolis. Joan Joan