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Renita Jablonski: Meanwhile, Wall Street has some other things on its mind. Today, there’s a conference in Washington for the security industry’s first-ever federal legislative and regulatory conference. Jill Barshay reports.

Jill Barshay: It’s no coincidence 150 financial executives are holding their first conference in the capital in the middle of a credit crunch. Richard Hunt is the chief lobbyist at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

Richard Hunt: We have people come to Washington D.C. to lobby members of Congress quite often, but this is the first time we’ve gathered this many people under one roof at one time to go en masse to Capitol Hill.

Wall Street wants more federal help to borrow money and to curb mortgage defaults. But it’s worried about increased federal regulation. It’s saying that’ll make the U.S. uncompetitive. Most of all, though, Wall Street needs to make friends in Washington.

Hunt: I hate to use the word perfect storm, but our industry is going to be under the perfect storm for a couple of years now.

Hunt says investment tax breaks are high on the agenda, even though they don’t expire until 2010.

In New York, I’m Jill Barshay for Marketplace.