the observed value of Δ m$_{B}$$_{s}$ (for less naive treatments see e.g. [6, 12]). There are two different features that can provide flavor-related suppression factors: degeneracy and alignment. In general, low energy measurements can only constrain the product of these two suppression factors. An interesting exception occurs, however, for the LL operators of the type (3.4) where there is an independent constraint on the level of degeneracy [16]. We here briefly explain this point. Consider operators of the form where X$_{Q}$ is an hermitian matrix. Without loss of generality, we can choose to work in the basis defined in Eq. (2.10): where λ$_{Q}$ is a diagonal real matrix, and V$_{d}$ is a unitary matrix which parametrizes the misalignment of the operator (3.6) with the down mass basis. The experimental constraints that are most relevant to our study come from K $^{0}$– K 0 and D $^{0}$– D 0 mixing, which involve only the first two generation quarks. When studying new physics effects, ignoring the third generation is often a good approximation to the physics at hand. Indeed, even when the third generation does play a role, our two generation analysis is applicable as long as there are no strong cancellations with contributions related to the third generation. In a two generation framework, V depends on a single mixing angle (the Cabibbo angle θ$_{c}$ ), while V$_{d}$ depends on a single angle and a single phase. To understand various aspects of our analysis, it is useful, however, to provisionally set the phase to zero, and study only CP conserving (CPC) observables. We thus have It is convenient to define Thus λ$_{12}$ parametrizes the overall, flavor-diagonal suppression of X$_{Q}$ (in particular, loop factors), δ$_{12}$ parametrizes suppression that is coming from approximate degeneracy between the eigenvalues 10 1 Λ 2 NP ( Q$_{Li}$ ( X$_{Q}$ )$_{ij}$ γ$_{µ}$Q$_{Lj}$ )( Q$_{Li}$ ( X$_{Q}$ )$_{ij}$ γ $^{µ}$Q$_{Lj}$ ) , (3.6) Y d = λ$_{d}$, Y u = V $^{†}$λ$_{u}$ , X$_{Q}$ = V † d λ$_{Q}$V$_{d}$, (3.7) λ$_{Q}$ = diag( λ$_{1}$, λ$_{2}$ ) , V =   cos θ$_{c}$ sin θ$_{c}$ − sin θ$_{c}$ cos θ$_{c}$   , V$_{d}$ =   cos θ$_{d}$ sin θ$_{d}$ − sin θ$_{d}$ cos θ$_{d}$   . (3.8) λ$_{12}$ = 1 2 ( λ$_{1}$ + λ$_{2}$ ) , δ$_{12}$ = λ$_{1}$ − λ$_{2}$ λ$_{1}$ + λ$_{2}$ , Λ$_{12}$ = δ$_{12}$λ$_{12}$. (3.9) B. Correlations between K and D mixing