Helping him avoid a “dead end” as a youth was access to financial services stimulated by the confidence of local bankers, and a loving family, the nominee to head the Treasury’s financial research arm said during a confirmation hearing Tuesday.
Dino Falaschetti told the Senate Banking Committee, during a hearing on his nomination by President Donald Trump to be Director of the Treasury’s Office of Financial Research (OFR), that growing up in South Chicago, “my grade school was a tough place. Tough enough that my mom—a substitute teacher—and my dad—a high school teacher— saw early on that I was headed toward a dead end. Unfortunately, a better school district looked beyond my parents’ reach.”
But Falaschetti, who is now the chief economist for the House Financial Services Committee, said his parents stretched their means to give their children a better environment. “They could not have pulled it off without the confidence of local bankers who provided the support necessary to enable my parents to do what was right for their family,” he said.
The economist told the panel that, if confirmed, he would work with the Senate committee and the financial regulator members of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) to “promote a more resilient financial sector so that all Americans, wherever they might have started, have reliable access to the kind of financial hand up that helped my parents realize their dreams.”
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 established the OFR to support the FSOC by measuring and analyzing risks, performing essential research, and collecting and standardizing financial data.
Falaschetti said his career and academic work prepared him to lead the OFR to ensure the research organization “efficiently and effectively provides the high-quality financial data and analysis that Congress intended.
“However, it is my upbringing that taught me why this mission is so important,” he said.
Statement of Dino Falaschetti, PhD, Nominee to Serve as Director of the Office of Financial Research