President Joe Biden announced his nomination of Ron Borzekowski for director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research (OFR).
The OFR was established by the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010 and is responsible for analyzing risks, performing research, and collecting and standardizing data across financial systems.
Borzekowski served as senior economist for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 2009 to 2011. In 2011, he joined the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) serving as a supervisory economist, deputy assistant director for research, and assistant director for research. In 2019, he left the bureau to work in the private sector as director of economics at Amazon Web Services. In June 2022, he joined Yale University as director of the school’s newly-created Data-Intensive Social Science Center.
The nomination already received a negative response from congressional Republicans, including House Financial Services Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.).
“The days of Democrats using critical financial regulators to push progressive priorities with zero consequences are over,” McHenry said. “President Biden’s nomination of Ron Borzekowski to lead the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research is unsettling. I’m concerned Mr. Borzekowski—an original Richard Cordray staffer—will bring the partisan, unaccountable nature of the CFPB to the important work of OFR and the Financial Stability Oversight Council. The Biden Administration’s use of FSOC to push the radical left’s social and climate policies are part of a troubling trend of rogue Democrat regulators going far beyond their congressionally granted statutory authority. Under Republican leadership, the Financial Services Committee will use aggressive and robust oversight to ensure Biden’s regulators, including OFR and FSOC, focus on their core missions and stay within the bounds of Congressional intent.”