NEW YORK, March 26 (Reuters) - A
U.S. government official said on Tuesday that it was too soon to draw
conclusions on financial stability from the bailout of Cyprus, which has
rattled markets globally over the past week and a half.
It is still "early days,"
Richard Berner, the newly appointed director of the U.S. Treasury's Office of Financial
Research, said, when asked what lessons the United States might learn on the
durability of financial markets.
"I think it's probably early
days and too soon to draw those lessons," Berner said after a speech at
New York University's Stern School of Business. "That's something that's
going to be worth looking at."
Large depositors in Cyprus, many of
them rich foreigners, face losses after the small island nation struck a deal
with international lending bodies designed to bail out and rein in the oversized
financial sector.
The deal should keep Cyprus in the
European single currency union. With the country's banks ordered to remain
closed until Thursday, and the government there having not yet revealed how it
plans to prevent runs on the banks, investors still remained wary of the
situation on Tuesday.
In one of his first public
appearances as director of the Office of Financial Research, or OFR, Berner
said Europe has long been identified as a threat to U.S. financial stability.
"We'll continue to focus on
that," he said.
The OFR was created by the
Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul to help regulators prevent a repetition of the
2007-2009 financial crisis.
The agency, responsible for
collecting and analyzing data to support the Financial Stability Oversight
Council, has been under scrutiny for its slow progress. Many Republicans in the
Senate want to see it scrapped.
Berner, a former chief economist for
Morgan Stanley, began his six-year term in January.
