I suspect that many of you in this room have refinanced your mortgages, perhaps more than once, over the past two years. Maybe some of you even cashed out, or extracted, some of the equity you had accumulated in your house when you refinanced your old loan.
Given the colourful range of professions gathered here at this reception, the occasionally gloomy topics covered by my speech and, above all, the festive Carnival-themed decorations here at this venue, I think I will round things off with an entertaining anecdote after all.