Saule Omarova’s ideas to bridle the giants in the sector turned out to be too heretical
She withdrew her candidacy after senators attacked her for her past as a Komsomol member in Kazakhstan
The US financial system would have been fundamentally shaken if the Senate had approved the candidacy proposed by President Joe Biden for head of the currency control department. It is the body that oversees 1,200 US banks with assets of more than $ 14 trillion. If this had happened, it would be the first time that this crucial 158-year-old institution would have been headed by a woman, and
immigrant
while growing
in the former USSR
Kazakhstan-born Saule Omarova was heard by the Senate Banking Commission in November. However, the attacks against her were so numerous and unrestrained that she withdrew her candidacy on Wednesday, even before a voting date was set. Miracles obviously do not happen in the land of unlimited possibilities.
Omarova, 55, was born in Uralsk, Kazakhstan, in 1966. She emigrated to the United States in 1991 during the collapse of the Soviet Union. But although she has been a US citizen for 30 years, Republican senators’ questions have focused on her childhood and youth in the Soviet republic, her membership in the Komsomol, and her dissertation on Karl Marx and Capital.
“I don’t know what to call you, Professor or Comrade,” Louisiana Sen. John F. Kennedy told the candidate.
“I am not a communist, I do not support this ideology and I have not had the opportunity to choose where to be born,” Omarova replied calmly. – My family suffered from the communist regime. I grew up without knowing half of my relatives. My grandmother twice escaped death under Stalin. This is etched in my mind. This is me. I came to this country and I’m proud to be American. ” In 2019, the immigrant from the USSR had already told the Financial Times how her grandmother’s whole family was
sent to
Siberia in time
to Stalin and there
into exile
everyone dies
“Grandma’s family members were educated Kazakhs who refused to join the party, so death awaited them,” the granddaughter said.
Omarova’s classmates from Uralsk remember her brilliant mind. The girl grows up with her mother and grandmother. The mother is a doctor at the local tuberculosis dispensary. Saule graduated with a gold medal, which is given only to the best of the best. She was accepted to study philosophy at Moscow State University on a Lenin scholarship, which at that time was equal to the salary of a young engineer or doctor. Her dissertation is on the topic: “Economic analysis of Karl Marx and the theory of revolution in” Capital “.
In 1991, he left for the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States on an exchange student program and never returned. In 1999 he defended his doctoral dissertation on “Political Economy of Oil in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan”. In 2001, he also received his doctorate in law from Northwestern University in Chicago. For several years he worked in one of the largest and most prestigious law firms in New York – “David Pork and Wardwall”. Under George W. Bush, he was an adviser to the Treasury Department. For several years he has been a professor of banking law at Cornell University, part of the Ivy League, and is considered
one of
the most authoritative
specialists
by bank
regulation
However, according to Republican Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania, Omarova has defended very radical ideas over the years.
“Nationalization of the banking system, introduction of state control over prices, maintaining the idea that money is a public and not a private good. These ideas are socialist, “he said. According to him, the nomination of the immigrant from the former USSR as head of the Currency Control Department of the Ministry of Finance is alarming and frightening.
During the hearings, the Fox News TV channel, which is close to the Conservatives, presented a compromising statement from the lawyer’s past. Recall that in 1995 she was
arrested
for theft
to the store,
where she came from
4 pairs of shoes,
2 perfumes, 2 belts and a pair of socks, for a total of 214 dollars. In January 1996, the lawsuit against her was dropped because she immediately agreed to pay, and there were no other misdemeanors in the state of Wisconsin. Omarova has never hidden these facts from her past, the White House advocated for her.
The professor received her most ardent defense from the Democrat Elizabeth Warren. She accused Republicans of a vicious slanderous campaign and said their attacks had nothing to do with her qualifications and ability to do the job she was nominated for.
“You are being attacked by sexists, racists and McCarthyists,” Warren told Omarova. “I am an easy target: an immigrant, a woman, a representative of a minority. It is not difficult for me to be demonized and offended “, the candidate herself commented.
According to analysts, there are indeed some heretical moments in Saule Omarova’s ideas for the American financial system. She insists that consumer banking services be transferred from private commercial banks to the Federal Reserve, calls for regulation of financial technology giants at the state level, is a strong opponent of cryptocurrency and calls against its use. The lobby of the big banks accuses it of intentions to nationalize. The professor explains that the giant banks go beyond their financial tasks and trade in precious metals and raw materials, which can become a threat to the state.
“Saule Omarova wants to destroy the private banking sector, ruin the oil and gas companies and does not allow the Senate to read her diploma work on Karl Marx’s economic policy. The fact that Joe Biden is even considering her candidacy is insane, “Republican activist Lauren Bobert tweeted.
The strongest concern among the banking lobby is Omarova’s idea, set out in 2020 in her article “The People’s Book: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy.” In it, she proposes that Americans have the right to open accounts directly with the Federal Reserve. Then the need for intermediary banks to lend without relying on their own reserves and using money from the central bank would disappear. That would kill the US banking system, those affected said. However, Saule calls himself an idealist in the free market and insists that he wants to prevent megabanks from accumulating profitable investments on the backs of society. “The bank regulator who hates banks,” the Wall Street Journal called it.
Another reason for criticism is the professor’s attitude towards cryptocurrency. She is convinced that its development leads to the emergence of shadow banks, which is why she insists on stricter regulation of financial technology companies. To this end, it proposes the establishment of a National Investment Authority. According to Omarova
the business itself
interested
only from the money
here and now,
and not from long-term strategies, so planning, financing and control in many areas and industries must be taken over by this management. The idea is not really new – in Roosevelt’s time, two-thirds of investments went through such a National Investment Authority.
Following the withdrawal of the immigrant from Kazakhstan, Senator Patrick Toome said he was pleased with her decision and advised Biden to propose a candidate with a generally accepted view of the US economy. For now, Saule Omarova’s unconventional views will clearly remain reserved for her students at Cornell. And for her family – wife Timur, son Aidan and mother Saida, who also long ago turned her back on Soviet Kazakhstan.
– .
