I, for one, welcome our new communist overlords.
Saule Omarova, currently a Cornell University law professor, is Biden's pick for Comptroller of the Currency, a position which prior to this week was not considered particularly fertile ground for fomenting radical political transformation. The defined responsibilities are in fact, quite mundane.
The Comptroller of the Currency is the administrator of the federal banking system and head of the OCC [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency]... [which] charters, regulates, and supervises all national banks and federal savings associations as well as federal branches and agencies of foreign banks.
The Comptroller of the Currency is basically an administrative position, but the oversight function of the OCC could provide plenty of opportunities to introduce novel approaches to banking.
Such as eliminating banking.
Sure, Omarova does not have the explicit and enumerated power to do so, but I'm pretty sure most of us assumed governors did not have the explicit and enumerated power to suspend religious freedom, or that the President of the United States did not have the power to eliminate an entire national border or people's jobs based on a vaccine, and yet here we are.
I'll get back to that in a moment, but I think it's important we understand her thinking, as it is reflexively collectivist.
It's not just that she graduated from Moscow University in 1989 and received a Lenin academic scholarship. After all, people grow, people learn, people change.
She is not one of those people.
This is from 2019:
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."
"Market doesn't always 'know best.'"
In 1989, right around the time Omarova was graduating from Moscow University and standing in bread lines, this is was what the "economic system pay gap" was.
In 1989, the official GDP of the Soviet Union was $2,500 billion[76] while the GDP of the United States was $4,862 billion[77] with per capita income figures as $8,700 and $19,800 respectively.
Maybe Cornell law professors don't "always know best" either.
Especially when Wall Street Journal reporters say she "admires the Societ economic system."
And of course she supports public housing. Lots of it.
"A system of public enterprises that build and operate housing will help us out of our current crisis and will be a step toward sharing America's vast urban land wealth among us all."
"... a step toward sharing America's vast urban land wealth among us all."
Engels could not have said it better himself.
And I could not have a better response than this.
The mainstream media greeted her nomination in a number of entertaining ways.
Politico decided to go with the classic scare quotes. It's just a reflex now whenever progressives are confronted with concepts that threaten their personal narrative.
"Radical."
What, really, is "radical?" Is it radical to eliminate the entire banking system and replace it with the Federal Reserve?
This is from a paper she published early last year called, "The People's Ledger." (Rest assured, whenever communists start talking about "the people," they don't mean the people.)
In a franchise-like arrangement, the Fed modulates the supply of sovereign credit-money but outsources the economy-wide allocation of this precious resource to specially licensed and regulated private financial institutions: banks.
In other words, lending is left to the independent judgment of thousands of private, independent businesses competing with each other using their judgment regarding credit risks and required returns all of which is informed by market forces, which themselves are part of a dynamic system that changes by the hour if not the minute.
This is the very definition of capitalism. She thinks it would be preferable to consolidate that power with the Federal Reserve, which is the federal government's bank.
In this paradigm, there is no direct relationship between the central bank and the real people participating in the real, i.e. non-financial, economy.
She thinks it's a problem that the government is not more involved in these private transactions.
Because she's a communist, and that's how communists think.
On the liability side, the Article envisions the ultimate "end-state" whereby central bank accounts fully replace—rather than compete with— private bank deposits.
Does it get better?
It gets better.
As part of this exploratory exercise, the Article proposes a mechanism for modulating the aggregate supply of money via direct crediting—and, in rare circumstances, debiting— of universally held Fed Accounts. It shows how this unconventional mechanism, colloquially known as "helicopter money," would empower the Fed to conduct monetary policy in a far more targeted, dynamic, and effective manner than can be done via interest rate management alone.12
She wants to make "helicopter money" easier and "far more targeted, dynamic and effective."
Because the government knows best.
While Politico at least acknowledged the possibility that she could be perceived as being radical, the New York Times decided to ignore that little problem entirely and went with as benign and non-controversial a headline as any human could conjure up.
She's not worried that government is getting too powerful, on the contrary, she thinks the government is not powerful enough.
I'm sorry, did I say "government?" As the New York Times puts it in their subheadline, it's taxpayers. You know, just regular folks. I mean, Folx. Like Joe Sixpack! And also Joe Six-figure-income federal bureaucrat.
Saule Omarova, a Cornell law professor, has advocated a more equal share of power and success between taxpayers and big banks.
Naturally, the first thing the Times highlights in the body of the article is the fact that she is a diversity hire.
If confirmed, Ms. Omarova, who grew up in what is now Kazakhstan, will be the first woman and the first nonwhite person to serve as comptroller of the currency.
It then notes that,
She was a policy adviser at the Treasury Department under President George W. Bush...
This is intended to suggest she is not partisan when she's 100% an ideologue. Regardless, according to her Cornell bio, she was a low-level functionary.
In 2006-2007, she served at the U.S. Department of the Treasury as a Special Advisor for Regulatory Policy to the Under Secretary for Domestic Finance.
If you find yourself dozing off halfway through someone's job title, they are a low-level functionary.
What does the Times not mention?
Well, for one that paper she prepared just last year, "The People's Ledger," that I discussed above.
It doesn't get so much as a passing mention, nor does the fact that she graduated from Moscow University under a Lenin academic scholarship... both of which are instructive precisely because you can see, with just a rudimentary review of her recent work not to mention Twitter account, that they continue to inform her views to this day.
They do try to provide themselves a fig leaf of cover.
In her academic work, Ms. Omarova has proposed bold changes to the financial system, but those proposals — most notably an idea for a public infrastructure investment authority modeled on the structure of the Federal Reserve system — would not be easy to introduce from a post atop the O.C.C.
It's really fascinating how they do this. She does in fact support a National Investment Authority to promote infrastructure investment, and yes that would "not be easy to introduce from a post atop the OCC," but changing the banking system from a post atop an agency in charge of regulating the banking system?
It seems like that would at least be worth a mention. It's certainly more relevant than her support for public infrastructure.
To sum up, Biden chose a Soviet-trained economist who favors taking over large portions of the banking system to be one of his top banking system regulators.
What is the end goal?
Hint:
This woman is a radical communist bent on enslaving us to the government, no matter what the New York Times, Politico, or other guardians of the narrative say.
P.S. Now check out our latest video 👇
