Two questions about balanced operation ...

Two questions:

(1) I have a fully balanced preamp and CD player that I am running single-ended. I live on the 18th floor of an old building that does not have three-prong outlets. When I had dedicated lines for my amps installed, the electrician said that we do not have a water pipe that would be sufficient to run a ground wire to. Thus, the system is not grounded.

My question is, if I replace my single-ended interconnects with balanced interconnects, does the system need to be grounded in order for the balanced circuit to function properly? If the answer is yes, I'll stick with single-ended operation absent another solution or other information indicating that it is still better to run balanced, even lacking a ground, if your gear features a truly balanced circuit.

(2) I have read that an MC phono cartridge is a "naturally balanced device". Can someone explain this statement? (No need to address why this is or is not the case with MM cartridges unless you want to). A cartridge has a positive and negative connection for each channel, but no extra connections for a ground on each channel. The typical phono cable has a positive and negative lead for each channel, and a single ground wire for the both the arm and table (this is true whether the connection is a five-pin DIN or a pair of RCA's). So what's the scoop? Can a cartridge send a fully balanced signal through single-ended interconnects? I would think the answer is "of course not". Is it possible to use balanced cables from an MC cartridge to a balanced phono stage (I don't see how given the four-pin configuration of a cartridge's outputs).

In short, I would ideally like to take advantage of fully balanced operation for analog, but the cartridge's connections seem to say "single-ended only". Is it possible, practically speaking, to get a fully balanced signal from the cartridge to the phono preamp?

Thanks in advance for your responses.