THE FERMION MASS HIERARCHY AND GAUGED CHIRAL FLAVOR QUANTUM NUMBERS

We briefly argue that the fermion mass hierarchy points toward a class of extensions of the Standard Model gauge group which has received sc ant attention in the literature. The members of this class are charact erised by having the same irreducible representations as exist in the Standard Model and by having the Standard Model embedded within them a s a diagonal subgroup. The anomalies of the new mass protecting gauge quantum numbers cancel amongst the Standard Model quarks and leptons a lone, and we analyse how well some specific groups can naturally produ ce the hierarchies of fermion masses and mixing angles, at least order of magnitude wise.