Power Profiles

Mary Schapiro

Mary Schapiro

OCCUPATION CEO
National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD); former SEC commissioner; and both the first woman and youngest chairman ever of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission

WASHINGTON LIFE: What piqued your interest in securities?
MARY SCHAPIRO: Nelson Bunker Hunt and his brother trying to corner the world silver market. I was fascinated by the idea that there were people who thought they were more powerful than market forces.

WL: It?s not easy getting to where you are. Any trying moments you can share?
MS: I was once dismissed as a "blond, 5-foot-2-inch girl" by the head of the Chicago Board of Trade and by New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer as "cowed."

WL: Math or science?
MS: I?m not a math type. I can?t help my sixth grader do her math homework.

WL: Does NASD know that? I would have thought they?d give you a math test.
MS: It?s not really about numbers as much as understanding market structure, the importance of intermediaries and markets, and the public policy that governs them.

WL: Most memorable scandal?
MS: Enron and WorldCom.

WL. For the uninitiated; what is NASD?
MS: It?s a $400 million private regulatory agency that governs the Goldmans, Merrills and Morgan Stanleys of the world.

WL: Are you the first women to chair the agency?
MS: Yes.

WL: Care to comment on any future trends…?
MS: As the baby boomers age, there is going to be tremendous effort put into creating products that allow them to ensure that their accumulated wealth lasts for the duration of their retirement, because we?re all living so much longer.

Chris Matthews

Chris Matthews

OCCUPATION
Author, Political Commentator, Journalist, Churchillian, Public Speaker, African Wildlife Buff and Tummler

WASHINGTON LIFE: What?s your new book about, and what motivated you to write it?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: It?s going to be a rather large book on what I?ve learned in a third of a century working amid the political world.

WL: Where do you go in D.C. to escape politics?
CM: I go to my backyard to read, listen to music and smoke a good cigar.

WL: Favorite reporter past or present?
CM: Past: Ernest Hemingway. Present: Howard Fineman

WL: Your debates on-air are constricted to time segments...Do you ever find yourself at a cocktail party looking for a commercial count down?
CM: No. I?m rather free-wheeling.

WL: What?s the trick to interrupting people?
CM: Watch a tape of Ted Koppel. He?s so good you can?t hear him doing it. He nails ?em right at the paragraph!

WL: Hobbies?
CM: A good time somewhere in Africa. I was there in the ?60s with the Peace Corps, hitchhiked an incredible
distance up through East Africa. We keep going back.

WL: What?s your theory on "power?"
CM: In the short run, Machiavelli was right. It?s better
to be feared than loved, people being fickle. In the long run, it?s better being loved morally and historically. Think Winston Spencer Churchill and Josef Stalin.