Under the bill’s current language, according the Senate Banking Committee sources, the OFR under the new federal law would be allowed to collect any financial data it chooses, whether from individual citizens or businesses. Under the language of the bill, the data center can collect and maintain “all data necessary” to monitor the financial system.

By The Prowler at American spectator

A little noticed section (Section 152, page 63) of the Obama administration’s Financial Reform bill would create a new 1,000-employee office within the Department of the Treasury, the Office of Financial Research, which is raising alarm bells among Senate GOP staff, who say the entity would have broad powers to invade the privacy of American citizens and monitor their finances and financial activity at a level never before allowed by the federal government.

The OFR is a companion entity to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which is also proposed in the legislation (section 1001, page 1030).

Under the bill’s current language, according the Senate Banking Committee sources, the OFR under the new federal law would be allowed to collect any financial data it chooses, whether from individual citizens or businesses. Under the language of the bill, the data center can collect and maintain “all data necessary” to monitor the financial system. Wall Street executives are also concerned, because of the kind of “competitive intelligence” such an entity could collect.

“In real time, this office could be monitoring how an investment bank creates sole purpose entities and moves funding around for deal-making, real estate purchases, that kind of thing,” says an executive with J.P. Morgan Chase. “That’s not the kind of information anyone would want to have being shared, particularly if the government could in some way be a competitor. And the way things are going with financial institutions, that’s increasingly a real possibility.”

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