Treasury looking to staff up new financial research office

By Peter Schroeder - 06/27/11 03:23 PM ET

The Treasury Department is hustling to fill up its new Office of Financial Research (OFR), buoyed by strong industry support, according to a top Treasury official.

Richard Berner, a counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, said Monday that it was an "extremely high priority" at the department to get a director and staff in place for the new office, speaking at a conference on the Dodd-Frank reform law hosted by the Pew Financial Reform Project and New York University's Business School.

There is no official timeline in place to name a director, but the Treasury is aiming to have 60 full-time staff in place by the end of September, according to the department's website.

The OFR, created by the financial reform law and housed in the Treasury, is intended to improve the quality of financial data the government can provide to policymakers — in particular the new Financial Stability Oversight Council, also a Dodd-Frank creation aimed at preventing another broad financial crisis.

The office also will allow the government to better analyze what is happening in the financial system and will lead a push to standardize financial reporting both domestically and on a global scale.

And while the financial industry might be working to delay or otherwise deter some of the impacts of the financial reform package, Berner said the government and industry are both on board with the new office.

"We have tremendous buy-in from the industry," Berner said. "In fact, I think they are somewhat impatient that we are not going faster."

That stands in stark contrast to a warning Geithner offered Wednesday. Testifying before the House Small Business Committee, he warned lawmakers that Wall Street firms were spending "a huge amount of money to erode, weaken, walk back" most of the new regulations authorized by Dodd-Frank.