Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"There actually is, and it is the auto market. For a long time there have been auto loans made to car buyers who would be considered very high risk. These are typically folks with limited income, and they also have low credit scores. The average kind of borrower in this situation finances about 90 percent of the car purchase, and they have a typical loan of about $11,000.

"Now these loans are very risky, and I think the lenders realize that. In fact more than half of them result in a default and most of those occur in the first year of the loan. Consequently, because there is a high risk of default and because the borrowers are very risky, the interest rates reflect this high risk. Interest rates for these kinds of sub-prime auto loans are in the neighborhood of 25 to 30 percent."