"It's a universal problem that when an event of this scale occurs, it's not easy for individuals to make decisions because they have such widespread ramifications, " said Dalziel, whose home was damaged in the quake.

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And while this problem often arises among the fringes of the securities industry at lesser and often dubious brokerage firms, this practice also occurs at the big boys, be they Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, or the like.

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