Obama Naming Richard Berner To Head Treasury Department's Office of Financial Research

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is nominating a senior counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to head a new government office set up to provide regulators with improved information to help prevent another financial crisis.

The White House announced Friday economist Richard Berner is the president's choice to be the first director of the Office of Financial Research within the Treasury Department. His nomination must be confirmed by the Senate.

The research office was created by legislation enacted last year to restructure how the financial system is regulated in the wake of the nation's worst financial crisis since the 1930s. It will collect and analyze financial data for early warnings to regulators of potential problems.

Berner previously held positions at the New York Federal Reserve and the Congressional Budget Office.

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Comments

[lqw]

07:28 AM on 12/19/2011

Obama nominates another Wall Street banker.

[MUDPUPPY]

02:35 AM on 12/19/2011

Instead of hiring someone else to tell Timothy Geithner how to do his job, why not just replace Geithner with him? Why hire two people to do one man's job?

[lqw]

07:29 AM on 12/19/2011

This guy was Geithner's counselor. A Morgan Stanley banker.

[hx4354x0r]

10:02 PM on 12/18/2011

Seriously? This guy is a from Morgan Stanley, and before that Mellon Bank? Don't we have enough of these "TBTF Bank Graduate" guys in Obama's administration already?

http://thinkmarkets.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/crony-capitalism.jpg

This may give us some indication WHY our economy is dead in the water: Obama's cabinet is filled has been filled with all the most "Hard Working" "Successful" "Job Creating" business people in our country!

Talk about moral and social fraud on the grandest scale...

[Simply Red]

07:32 PM on 12/18/2011

Looking back, maybe it's not such a bad idea after all to lower the speed limit nationwide. It did two good things. It made it safer to drive, and it kept oil prices low. Especially for diesel which is the fuel of choice used in most shipping vehicles, and farm equipment. This in turn will lower food costs as well. I personally don't want to see that happen, but if it will help us get out of the hole we're stuck in so be it.

[Simply Red]

07:25 PM on 12/18/2011

Good, it sounds like this dude has a brain. Now if he can reduce our spending on foreign aid to all these unappreciative countries with their hand out, get us off of our dependency on foreign oil, stimulate alternative fuel sources, Get the price of diesel down especially. Maybe we can pull out of this hole that all the politicians previously have dug for us before they start lowering the national speed limit, and doing little tricks like that to try and save our energy consumption. i feel it coming.

[lqw]

07:30 AM on 12/19/2011

A Wall Street banker ?

[April22]

05:54 PM on 12/18/2011

There is more to tell about Berner which was not included in the article.

Richard Berner was a Managing Director, Co-Head of Global Economics and Chief US Economist at Morgan Stanley, where he co-directed the firm's forecasting and anaylsis of the global economy and financial markets and co-headed the firms Stategy Forum.

Before joining Morgan Stanley, Berner was Exec. V.P. and Chief Economist at Mellon Bank. He also served 7 years on the research staff of the Federal Reserve in Washington.

He also served as a member of the Economic Advisory Panel at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Need I say more?!

http://www.morganstanley.com/views/gef/team/index.html#anchorrichardberner

[new beginning]

07:34 AM on 12/19/2011

Why does he continue to nominate clones of the ones who caused our economic crisis? Isn't that the definition of insanity?

[DrBulldog]

04:18 PM on 12/18/2011

Leadership position? Oh dang. Thought for a second Obama was nominating his replacement ...

[cdterm47]

04:13 PM on 12/18/2011

Govt. Economic research entities: CBO, Federal Reserve regions, Dept. of Labor, Census Bureau, Treasury economist, Obama's council of economic advisers, and now a new one for the Treasury. Nasa had redundant back up systems. Some one should do on how many back up reseach systems are relevant until they simply become a redundancy eating tax payers alive.

[itzfatcat]

02:41 PM on 12/18/2011

New government office. Just what we need is another government office to screw things up. Another pay off to a supporter, I guess.

[jimjits]

05:28 AM on 12/19/2011

good post...well said

[rutroGeorge]

01:31 PM on 12/18/2011

Is this his friggin' answer to everything? Appoint another commission, czar or some other cr_p? Timothy Geithner et al know exactly what the details and information are; they spend all their time figuring out how to get around them!
Obama has turned out to be so incredibly and evidentially irrevocably lame.

[ali baba lol]

12:36 PM on 12/18/2011

Nothing will help u with the finances that u drove into the ground and ruined this country.............Take your CHANGE AND SHOVE IT

[Oletech71]

12:17 PM on 12/18/2011

If Obama wants to do something useful he will appoint someone to provide HIM with improved informatiion to prevent another financial crisis. Obama is a FINANCIAL CRISIS all dressed up in a suit and failing to see it when he looks in a mirror.

[jimjits]

05:30 AM on 12/19/2011

Hey leave the poor president alone,he's going on vacation....his 62 one in three years.

[CaraMia82]

11:59 AM on 12/18/2011

wow, cant help notice how miserable looking those women are standing behind him, which is really how the rest of the country feels too. hopeless and no change.

[Simply Red]

07:34 PM on 12/18/2011

I hate bean counters myself.

[americanwhoserved]

11:48 AM on 12/18/2011

This says it all: President Barack Obama is nominating a senior counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to head a new government office set up to provide regulators with improved information to help prevent another financial crisis.
If he works for Tim Geithner, he is embedded with the rich in banks and wall street, and the advice he gives to "regulators" will be slanted not to help the 99 p and President Obama would only nominate someone to this important position because he was insured by the rich that they would love someone like him (they promised him a high paying job in a bank or on wall street after he "rubber stamped" everything they wanted in this "important" job. Americans are sick in tired of this, but will they finally vote for the the interests of the 99 percenters on November 6, 2012? I truly hope so!

[Simply Red]

07:35 PM on 12/18/2011

If he's a true bean counter offer him a crummy wage like he would you if to hire.

[jimjits]

05:31 AM on 12/19/2011

great point ..well said

[Shuey37]

11:41 AM on 12/18/2011

It is funny how team Obama always fills the background for photo ops with black government workers... and usually female. You'd think those women would at some point object to be used as political props?