  The smallness of fermion masses and mixing angles has recently been been
attributed to approximate global $U(1)$ symmetries, one for each fermion type.
The parameters associated with these symmetry breakings are estimated here
directly from observed masses and mixing angles. It turns out that although
flavor changing reaction rates may be acceptably small in electroweak theories
with several scalar doublets without imposing any special symmetries on the
scalars themselves, such theories generically yield too much CP violation in
the neutral kaon mass matrix. Hence in these theories CP must also be a good
approximate symmetry. Such models provide an alternative mechanism for CP
violation and have various interesting phenomenological features.
