Obama Taps Berner To Lead New Financial-Data Office

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; [e-mail]