Former Morgan Stanley chief U.S. economist Richard Berner was confirmed by the Senate on New Year's Day to serve as the first director of the Office of Financial Research (OFR). The OFR was created by Dodd-Frank to provide another new Dodd-Frank regulator, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), with information to monitor risks in the U.S. financial system.…

The fiscal cliff deal painfully hammered out in the waning hours of 2012 likely foreshadows the battles yet to come this year over the country's fundamental mismatch between revenue and spending. But these fiscal fights are not the only reason 2013 promises to be interesting.…

The Dodd-Frank Act was presented to the nation two years ago as the prescription to avoid a repeat of the financial crisis of 2007-2008. As my co-authors and I discuss in an upcoming book, Dodd-Frank: What It Does and Why It’s Flawed, due out later this month, the prescription wasn’t well-suited to the problems that gave rise to the crisis.…