Mr. John Hurley:

The contacts with Frankfurt were extraordinarily close. I mean, the ... the ... the building up of the Eurosystem, which was essentially ... took a very large chunk of my time, was terribly labour intensive. I mean the issue that arises, Senator, that you're actually, you know, I think, touching on, is the very fact that the ECB wasn't given any responsibility for regulation and supervision early on, and is only now being given some of these functions in relation to the main banks. This was ... there was no unanimity at the time to enable this to happen. And had it happened, I think then you would've had a different dialogue.