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EDITORIAL: The would-be bank boss who hates banks

President Joe Biden’s capitulation to the far left has become clear in recent weeks. Consider his nominee to head the federal agency regulating U.S. banks.

Saule Omarova is a Cornell University law professor who has some unique ideas about the Soviet Union and banking. The existence of a hyper-liberal professor isn’t exactly newsworthy, but most of them aren’t nominated to be the comptroller of the currency, the office that regulates all national banks and is an independent arm of the Department of Treasury.

Even for the Biden administration, Ms. Omarova holds extremist views. Last year, she authored a paper titled, “The people’s ledger: How to democratize money and finance the economy.” In that piece, she wrote approvingly of a move to “effectively ‘end banking,’ as we know it.”

It’s easy to criticize the big, bad banking industry. It’s harder to articulate a better alternative. After all, the United States has the strongest economy in the history of the world and will even survive Mr. Biden’s many missteps.

Ms. Omarova, who grew up in what is now Kazakhstan, apparently has a special affection for the Soviet Union. “Until I came to the U.S., 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,” she tweeted in 2019. “Market doesn’t always ‘know best.’ ”

Sure, there were the pesky gulags, mass oppression and killings and a lack of basic necessities. But the really important thing is that communist bureaucrats set gender-neutral wages.

But there’s more. In that same 2020 paper, Ms. Omarova wanted to “reimagine the role of a central bank as the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating and allocating financial resources in a modern economy.” Further, she envisions an “ultimate ‘end-state’ whereby central bank accounts fully replace — rather than compete with — private bank deposits.” In other words, she wants to eliminate private financial institutions in favor of a nationalized system run by Washington functionaries.

Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising coming from someone who used the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarships to attend Moscow State University in the 1980s.

Nothing is perfect, and the U.S. banking system isn’t the exception to that rule. But Ms. Omarova seems wedded to the kind of dangerous and discredited thinking that led to disastrous consequences for a good portion of the globe during the 20th century. She previously served in the Treasury Department during the George W. Bush presidency as a special advisor on regulatory policy, but comptroller is a much more prominent and important position.

Bottom line: Ms. Omarova is an awfully odd choice from a “moderate” president to be the country’s top banking regulator. Senate Republicans should stand firm against her nomination.

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