Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who didn’t see fit to pay his own income taxes, may soon have the authority to watch over your financial transactions, thanks to a new federal agency that would be created in the Democrats’ financial overhaul bill. The Office of Financial Research, straight out of a George Orwell novel, would serve as a central repository of transaction records generated at private financial companies. Geithner, along with an unspecified number of bureaucrats that he hires, will have unlimited access for “statistical analysis and research” of the nation’s financial institutions — supposedly for the purpose of spotting systemic problems that will allow them to act before another meltdown.
This agency is the latest in the series of unconstitutional power grabs that Democrats have grown accustomed to since Barack Obama became president. It violates American citizens’ Fourth Amendment guarantee of security in their “persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” and its imprecise language leaves plenty of room for expanding the agency’s activities without congressional approval. The type of information access that Democrats seek would not have enabled them to prevent the financial meltdown of 2008, but it would allow bureaucrats who work for this agency the opportunity to share their privileged information with the private sector one year after leaving the agency. So, ironically, the Office of Financial Research simply presents our bloated government even more opportunity for further corruption and mismanagement of the economy.
In other financial “reform” news, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), the architect of the legislation, has agreed to drop the $50 billion bailout fund in an effort to get Republicans onboard. While Dodd is making concessions, though, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is making accusations, claiming that Republicans are stalling because “they are having difficulty determining how they’re going to continue making love to Wall Street” if the bill passes. You’re a class act, Harry.
Tags: 1984 George Orwell, Constitution, epic fail obama, Geithner, Law, News, Office of Financial Research, Politics
Conservative Libertarian Outpost 
May 9, 2010 at 08:01
I absolutely despise when conservatives compare anything slightly left of Reagan, to being Orwellian. Fuck right off!
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May 9, 2010 at 08:22
This is an issue involving the Constitution, not Reagan. In any case the story quoted Democrats throughout, not Conservatives…
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May 9, 2010 at 17:27
futiledemocracy calm down!
Patrick this seems beast seems to be the love child of Committee to Establish the NationaI Institute of Finance. They tout themselves well and have some cred if you look at who makes them up but something smells bad.
The new levels of bureaucracy coming out of the so called financial reform crowd will cost big $$’s and fail ala Sarbanes Oxley
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May 9, 2010 at 20:31
The devils are always in the details Alfie. Something, and not just the Fourth Amendment issues, just does not seem right…
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May 10, 2010 at 05:47
Related via being an example of government being incapable of running stride for stride with Wall St
http://dailycaller.com/2010/05/08/regulators-officials-struggle-to-explain-wall-street-equities-plunge/
I’m not saying it won’t be nice to know what caused the belch that temporarily downed the Dow;however,I am saying it’s going to take days for two entities that relatively know what they’re doing to possibly figure it out.
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May 10, 2010 at 06:25
Thing of it is Alfie, there may well be a Kenysian type majority there, and that, as history has proved, always results in utter failure. Garbage in garbage out as they say…
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May 12, 2010 at 08:29
I’m actually on the CE-NIF. What we want is enough compute power to process what is going on in the banks. Right now we don’t. When they come pleading for another $2T I’d like to imagine that someone somewhere in the USGOV knows what is going on. Right now there is nothing. Nothing. No-one collects this data, no-one processes it, no-one can understand what is going on. Not even the banks, because they don’t have visibility into each other’s books. So we’re flying blind, guys. Totally blind. When the USGOV flies blind then the one-eyed banks have the advantage to rip us off. Which they are doing. OFR doesn’t care about day-trader accounts. It cares about Goldman’s trading accounts.
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