Obama Taps Berner To Lead New Financial-Data Office
December 17 2011 - 3:48PM
Dow Jones News
President Barack Obama has tapped Dick Berner, a former chief
U.S. economist for Morgan Stanley (MS), to lead the Treasury
Department's Office of Financial Research, a new division with
broad authority to gather data from the financial industry.
Although the office, designed to help policymakers analyze the
health of the U.S. financial system, is new and isn't widely known,
it has already met criticism from congressional Republicans who are
concerned that the agency's data-collection powers are too
broad.
Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R, Texas), for instance, argued recently
that the office's "broad mandate is deeply troubling and Orwellian
in nature." He compared it to the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau, another new unit created by the Dodd-Frank
financial-overhaul law that has caused much angst on Wall Street
and provoked protests from Republicans who argue that its actions
will deal a blow to financial markets.
Congress created the Office of Financial Research through the
sweeping 2010 Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul law as a way to improve
the quality of financial data and help federal officials spot
potential market problems that threaten the financial system.
Dodd-Frank was created to help prevent a repeat of the 2008
financial meltdown, and proponents of the law believe better
analysis and more standardized data could have helped policymakers
to detect market troubles sooner.
Berner joined the Treasury Department in April to help build the
financial-research office, which will feed information to the
Financial Stability Oversight Council, a council of regulators led
by the Treasury that Dodd-Frank established to help monitor the
financial system.
On Friday, the president disclosed his intent to nominate Berner
to the research office's top post.
Berner has held a number of prominent financial roles. In
addition to his role at Morgan Stanley, Berner has been a member of
the Economic Advisory Panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York, Panel of Economic Advisers of the Congressional Budget
Office, executive committee of the board of directors of the
National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Advisory Committee of
the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Berner has also won forecasting
awards from Market News and the National Association for Business
Economics. He holds a B.A. from Harvard College and a Ph.D. from
University of Pennsylvania.
-By Maya Jackson Randall, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-9255;
maya.jackson-randall@dowjones.com
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