Treasury Official Says Wall Street Reform Key To Economic Stability

By Vanessa Remmers

Richard Berner, Counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, gave an update as to the implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act on Monday, nearly a year after the reform bill became law.

Berner said that due to the law’s emphasis on information gathering and its dissemination into the right hands, it will help to prevent economic shocks from occuring in the future.

“Ultimately, we want to make the data we have widely available to a variety of constituents…so that we can develop risk monitoring tools and have a much more transparent financial system,” he said.

Berner named four partnerships critical for the Office of Financial Research to maintain in order for its research to succeed: financial institutions, market data vendors, the CCP and other market data repositories, and global regulatory communities. 

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Obama Losing His Top Economic Adviser

By Phillip Bunnell

The White House announced on Monday that Austan Goolsbee, Chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, will step down at the end of the summer.

Goolsbee has been on the job for less than a year after replacing former CEA Chief Chrstina Romer. Like Romer, Goolsbee will be returning to academia, as a professor at the University of Chicago. Goolsbee will begin at the start of the next school year in late August.

Goolsbee’s departure represents a trend among Obama’s economic team. Romer, former National Economic Council Director Larry Summers and former OMD Director Peter Orszag have all stepped down in the past year.

Van Hollen Blasts Boehner’s Economic Plan

A top Democrat in the House released a statement today assailing House Minority Leader John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) proposal to fix the economy.

“One of the key pieces of the Washington Republican agenda is repealing the remaining funds of the Recovery Act. This plan will terminate over 60,000 contracts and awards and extinguish more than $200 billion in economic activity at a critical moment. The result will be to put the brakes on the fragile recovery, kill thousands of new jobs, and create massive new uncertainty when the economy needs stability,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).

“Repealing this funding – which has created millions of jobs and brought our economy back from the brink of collapse – would mean taking contracts and grants back from small businesses and other entities that will use it to create jobs, rebuild our infrastructure, and provide necessary services. It will also put on the chopping block millions of dollars to support injured veterans,” Van Hollen added.

Numbers Show Recovery Slowed In Second Quarter

American consumers have spent less money, businesses have slowed their restocking, and as a result, recovery from the financial crisis slowed during the second quarter of 2010. In a report released by the Commerce Department today, economic growth has lost momentum, and is now growing at a 2.4% pace. This meager growth means that the 9.5% unemployment rate is not expected to fall.

-Philip Bunnell