Scott and John have written about Saule Omarova, Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. That office is the chief regulator of America’s banks.
Omarova is a graduate of Moscow State University (Russia, not Idaho), where she won the 1988-89 Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship. In her current, merely socialist, incarnation, Omarova would like to reimagine banking, as the cliché goes. Along the way, she would like to drive America’s oil, coal, and gas companies out of business.
It’s not surprising that Biden would be okay with Omarova as the nation’s chief regulator of banks. It’s a bit surprising, at least to me, that he and his handlers actually nominated her.
Now comes word that five Democrats have said they will not support Omarova’s nomination. Their patience with the Biden administration’s leftism has limits, after all — at least now that Biden has tanked in the polls and the prospect of a thumping/shellacking in 2022 looms.
The five Democrat objectors are Jon Tester, Mark Warner, and Kyrsten Sinema — all members of the Senate Banking Committee — plus John Hickenlooper and Mark Kelly. Good for them.
This emerging faction of Senate Democrats already got its way when Biden renominated Jerome Powell for another term as chairman of the Federal Reserve, passing over Lael Brainard, the candidate preferred by radicals like Elizabeth Warren. (Brainard got the vice chair slot.) Now it will force Biden to select a different nominee for OCC head.
I expect Biden to select another radical, given the fact that he disappointed the Warren faction on the Fed chair nomination. But I imagine he’ll find one with less of a footprint in Marxism than Omarova.
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