Mr. Edmund Honohan:

I have a quote from a former chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. In his book Take on the Street, he wrote:

During my seven and a half years in Washington ... nothing astonished me more than witnessing the powerful special interest groups in full swing when they thought a proposed rule or piece of legislation might hurt them, giving nary a thought to how the proposal might help the investing public. With laserlike precision, groups representing Wall Street firms, mutual fund companies, accounting firms, or corporate managers would quickly set about to defeat even minor threats. Individual investors, with no organized lobby or trade association to represent their views in Washington, never knew what hit them.

This is just an indication of the perception in New York as to how the operatives in the financial world operate.