Biden’s Nominee For Top Bank Regulator Earned “Lenin” Award, Praised USSR’s “Equality”, And Wants To “End Banking As We Know It”

President Biden’s pick for Comptroller of the Currency is quite the anti-capitalist.

Cornell University law professor Saule Omarova, who proposed ‘ending banking as we know it,’ and that radical change to the system would make the institution ‘more inclusive, efficient and stable,’ has come under fire over her extreme views.

“Until I came to the US, I couldn’t imagine that things like gender pay gap still existed in today’s world. Say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn’t always ‘know best,’” Omarova tweeted in 1999, adding (after receiving harsh criticism) “I never claimed women and men were treated absolutely equally in every facet of Soviet life. But people’s salaries were set (by the state) in a gender-blind manner. And all women got very generous maternity benefits. Both things are still a pipe dream in our society!”

What’s more, Omarova supports several progressive proposals – including the Green New Deal, and the creation of a giant bureaucracy she dubbed the National Investment Authority, which would – among other things – coordinate the long term economic strategy for the United States with upcoming infrastructure developments, according to the Washington Free Beacon. It would also manage a “big and bold” climate agenda.

The authority would have a congressionally approved governing board and regional offices across the country. In addition to developing roads, bridges, and other traditional infrastructure projects, the authority would fund affordable housing, public transit, and clean energy projects, as well as “climate change mitigation solutions,” Omarova told Congress this year. -Free Beacon

As the Wall Street Journal editorial board notes, “Ms. Omarova thinks asset prices, pay scales, capital and credit should be dictated by the federal government. In two papers, she has advocated expanding the Federal Reserve’s mandate to include the price levels of “systemically important financial assets” as well as worker wages. As they like to say at the modern university, from each according to her ability to each according to her needs.”

In a recent paper “The People’s Ledger,” she proposed that the Federal Reserve take over consumer bank deposits, “effectively ‘end banking,’ as we know it,” and become “the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources in a modern economy.” She’d also like the U.S. to create a central bank digital currency—as Venezuela and China are doing—to “redesign our financial system & turn Fed’s balance sheet into a true ‘People’s Ledger,’” she tweeted this summer. What could possibly go wrong? -WSJ

Omarova also wants to create a “Public Interest Council” of “highly paid” academics who would wield subpoena power over regulatory agencies, including the Fed.

In her earlier days, Omarova worked in the Bush administration Treasury Department.

As The Washington Free Beacon notes, Omarova’s policies have won her accolades from prominent progressive lawmakers and special interest groups. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) said Omarova’s nomination was “tremendous news.” The Sierra Club said Omarova would help the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency fight against “climate chaos” and set up “guardrails against Wall Street’s risky fossil fuel investments.”

Interestingly, The Wall Street Journal reports that Biden nominated Ms. Omarova over the objections of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, to whom the comptroller reports. One theory they suggest for this bizarre nomination is that Mr. Biden is trying to appease progressives because he plans to reappoint Jerome Powell as Fed chairman.