Biden’s Banking Nominee Would Pursue Soviet Economics

Magicians try to distract the audience from looking at one hand by dangling something shiny in the other. So do politicians.

The left’s latest magician: Saule Omarova, President Biden’s nominee to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. OCC is an important agency — it has power to regulate all national banks and federal savings associations. OCC’s wrong moves negatively affect millions of Americans, making banking and other services more expensive and inaccessible, particularly for vulnerable, unbanked Americans.

Rather than answer serious congressional inquiries about whether she is the right fit for OCC, Omarova has attacked duly-elected members of Congress whose voters empower them to serve their interests. By refusing to answer basic questions about her work and worldview, Omarova has obstructed the constitutionally prescribed legislative process.

Born in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic, and educated at Moscow State University on the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship, Omarova is a Cornell University law professor. America is a nation of immigrants who achieve the American dream through hard work and perseverance. Yet Omarova pulls her magician’s shiny object, a “xenophobic sexist” label, as a cudgel against anyone who disagrees with her regulatory philosophy.

Omarova’s self-expressed desire to “radically democratize access to money and control over financial flows in the nation’s economy” would be achieved by centralizing control over all financial institutions. She believes the federal government should determine asset prices, wages, capital, and more — a move that would devastate American free enterprise and global competitiveness.

Omarova has not just advocated for increased regulations on the financial industry but for unprecedented government intervention in the affairs and activities of financial institutions. Of the fledgling cryptocurrency market, Omarova says it’s “benefiting mainly the dysfunctional financial system we already have.”

Senate Banking Committee ranking member Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) sent a letter asking Omarova to submit a copy of her Moscow State University thesis, “Karl Marx’s Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in The Capital,” to allow the committee to fully assess her nomination (all nominees are required to submit materials and writings under the vetting process). Omarova rejected his request, blowing past his deadline. Such cavalier dismissiveness of constitutionally empowered inquiries is unprofessional and improper.

In a tone-deaf Tweet, Omarova praised the failed Soviet regime that resulted in millions of deaths: “Say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn’t always ‘know best,’” she wrote.

In a disturbing 2020 academic paper called “The People’s Ledger: