i think roger ferguson is one of the all-time great thinkers in regulatory restructuring in this country. he's right on both counts. we're for fewer federal agencies and want to see some consolidation rather than more federal agencies.. so i think merger of some of these agencies is the right thing to do. >> well, maria, i differ on steve on that. i think the ots and the ots charter should be kept alieavli. that's a good thing for america. we need to keep that going in the united states. >> you both agree on the insurance charter but you're differing on whether or not we should see a merging of some of the agencies. alex, let me get your thoughts on the your concerns about the financial reform on the table right now. you talked about the consumer protection agency. what's the problem? >> well, maria, look, president obama himself said that 94% of the high-cost mortgages came from the non-banks. the banking industry is all for, you know, having the confidence of the consumers. 62% of our banks have been around for 50 years or more. 31% of our banks have been 100 years or more in existence

>> you know, we had roger ferguson on last week, actually-w when we were at the aspen ideas festival, former chairman of the federal reserve. and he said he was disappointed in some of the ideas on the table because felt some of the government agencies should have been merged. he said the ftc and cftc should have been merged, it's too much bureaucracy. where do you come down on that? >> it's about priorities right now. i think most people do agree that those two institutions should be merged, we should be talking about harmonization, we should be talking about more collaboration, at least between the two, and a similar approach to regulation. i think we've got, frankly, other things to take care of first and we should put that on the agenda. but i don't think it should be on the near-term agenda. >> do you think investors have started to raek to some of these new proposals? here we are friday in the summertime, summer doldrums have begun in terms of volume come in on the light side, certainly on fridays if not all week in the summer time. what do you think's going on in terms of inves

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