-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 6:03 PM -0700 on 5/11/02, Eric Cordian wrote:
> The reason we have ready availability of credit in the first place > is because consumer debt is the most profitable business in the > United States. I really wonder what component of this market is actually payment driven. After all, to easily buy *anything* over, say, $100 right now, you have to borrow money, use a credit card, to do it. If it were actually cheaper -- and safer -- to use some form of internet financial cryptography protocol like blind signatures, I wonder how much of that "consumer debt" market would go away. Not all of it, obviously, but I do wonder about how much of that number is purely consumer debt and not just "payment finance", for lack of a better term.... Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 7.5 iQA/AwUBPN4DHsPxH8jf3ohaEQIgHQCg8Q2q2aq9wv3Fp7U2RuDUUyA5tL0An1UE g5B8hYmEnr1yy2Qg8R31s8Lu =mXMI -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
