| To: Alan Smithee who wrote (753683) | 12/7/2021 5:29:43 PM | | From: garrettjax | | | | Sorry - Didn't realize I had a subscription for WSJ or I just got lucky...
MARKETS FINANCIAL REGULATION
Saule Omarova, Biden’s Nominee to Oversee National Banks, Withdraws
Opposition from Republicans, moderate Democrats scuttles confirmation chances for comptroller of the currency pick
Saule Omarova, seen at a recent Senate hearing, is a Cornell University law professor.PHOTO: STEFANI REYNOLDS/BLOOMBERG NEWS
By
Andrew Ackerman
Updated Dec. 7, 2021 4:23 pm ET
WASHINGTON—Saule Omarova, President Biden’s nominee to oversee large national banks, withdrew from consideration on Tuesday, amid opposition from Republicans and moderate Democrats who had sought to block her nomination, the White House said.
“I have accepted Saule Omarova’s request to withdraw her name from nomination,” President Biden said Tuesday, saying he would look for a new nominee.
Mr. Biden last month nominated Ms. Omarova, a Cornell University law professor, to be Comptroller of the Currency, which supervises many of the biggest U.S. lenders including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co.
Ms. Omarova’s earlier calls for shrinking big banks and creating a much bigger role for the Federal Reserve in consumer banking has drawn opposition from industry advocates and Republicans. They have said she envisions an overly large role for the government that they say would crimp business, even at community lenders, a powerful constituency that lobbied against her nomination.
A group of moderate Democrats privately voiced their opposition to Ms. Omarova in the days after a contentious nomination hearing in November, according to people familiar with the deliberations. Their opposition alone likely scuttled her chances of confirmation through the evenly divided Senate.
Montana Sen. Jon Tester, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and Virginia Sen. Mark Warner—all centrist Democrats—conveyed their opposition to Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) on a telephone call about two weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal reported last month.
The conversation came after Messrs. Tester and Warner challenged Ms. Omarova at the Nov. 18 hearing over her past writing and thinking on banking oversight. Mr. Tester also pressed her at the hearing over remarks she made earlier this year calling for smaller oil-and-gas companies to go bankrupt to aid the U.S. in tackling climate change.
Ms. Omarova responded to Mr. Tester at the hearing by saying she misspoke and that her remarks weren’t well-framed. “My intention was…exactly the opposite,” she said. “We need to help those companies to get restructured.”
Ms. Omarova didn’t respond to an email on Tuesday seeking comment. In a brief withdrawal letter released by the White House, Ms. Omarova said, “it is no longer tenable for me to continue as a Presidential nominee.”
White House officials have defended Ms. Omarova but didn’t comment on Democratic opposition. Administration officials have said that Ms. Omarova, who was born in Kazakhstan when it was part of the Soviet Union, has been the target of “red baiting” from Republicans.
“As a strong advocate for consumers and a staunch defender of the safety and soundness of our financial system, Saule would have brought invaluable insight and perspective to our important work on behalf of the American people,” Mr. Biden said on Tuesday. “But unfortunately, from the very beginning of her nomination, Saule was subjected to inappropriate personal attacks that were far beyond the pale.”
Ms. Omarova’s defenders also include liberal-leaning Democrats such as Mr. Brown and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. They have said she is an accomplished banking expert who will stand up to the industry. The senators say Washington regulators have been too deferential to big banks in recent years and that Ms. Omarova would work to make the financial system more inclusive for consumers.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is an independent bureau of the Treasury Department. It oversees about 1,200 banks with total assets of $14 trillion, about two-thirds of the total in the U.S. banking system.
The White House has struggled to find a comptroller nominee who could win support from its Senate allies. Before nominating Ms. Omarova, the White House considered at least three other individuals for the role but never nominated them.
At present, the agency is run on an interim basis by Michael Hsu, a former Fed staffer. It has been without a Senate-confirmed head since May 2020.
Write to Andrew Ackerman at andrew.ackerman@wsj.com |
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| To: Sdgla who wrote (753682) | 12/7/2021 5:30:52 PM | | From: Hank Scorpio | | | | | Some people will not accept the obvious because the ramifications of such acceptance are so profound. To the infinitesimal percentage of Republicans that don’t believe the election was rigged the rest of us will simply have to settle for “I told you so”. |
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| From: i-node | 12/7/2021 5:31:31 PM | | | | | | Another Musk comment from today that is absolute truth. I'm sure I've posted the same comment here in the past re: capital allocation. 100% correct.
Including the tag line at the end re: violence.
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| To: Neeka who wrote (753679) | 12/7/2021 6:02:00 PM | | From: kckip | | | | inch by inch, they attempt to keep it from the sunlight.....find the right judge - our third branch is as corrupt as the other two.
And that, he said, would undermine what he said is a constitutional recognition that legislators are entitled to have private conversations and communications because that is part of their job. |
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| To: Hank Scorpio who wrote (753685) | 12/7/2021 7:06:40 PM | | From: kckip | | | | Agree in principle, but the "I told you so's" will fall on deaf ears until/unless we find a way to counter the Left, RINO's, especially the MSM Pravda (edit: I left out big TECH and Social Media - my bad), and the "Never Trumpers". Audits complete and others ongoing - The fraud was quantified and there for everyone to see and yet nothing is going to be done about it.....
Interesting article. crisismagazine.com
MARCH 5, 2021
Consider the culture wars that have been going on for 60 years or more. It is vital to understand that they are a war of aggression by the Left against regular Americans and our beliefs and practices. Consider, also, that they came about not from cultural change but through political imposition. The Left did not wait for the culture to change. They went right at politics.
Politics is downstream from culture. You have heard it plenty of times. Andrew Breitbart coined it, and many conservatives have adopted it as a truism, almost as gospel.
But is it true? Sure, it’s true. It makes perfect sense. The country’s political views grow from a cultural soil that has been prepared. Brown v. Board of Education on school segregation would never have been widely accepted if activists, lawyers, journalists, and many others had not prepared the ground for 58 years following the disastrous Plessy decision.
“Politics is downstream from culture” has become the coin of the conservative realm.
This week, Catholic entrepreneur Kari Beckman announced a bold vision for a Catholic community outside Tyler, Texas. She said, “Right now, we have a lot of people who want to ‘fix’ politics, and that’s noble. But, unfortunately, that’s way down the river. Before that, [this new community] will help people to embrace right thinking, and from that, right philosophy.” See, politics is downstream from culture.
But is it true? Is it always true? I argue that it’s not always true, and believing it’s always true is harmful to our culture and our politics.
Consider the culture wars that have been going on for 60 years or more. It is vital to understand that they are a war of aggression by the Left against regular Americans and our beliefs and practices. Consider, also, that they came about not from cultural change but through political imposition. The Left did not wait for the culture to change. They went right at politics.
School prayer is a good place to start. Engle v. Vitale was a case brought by a group of parents in Nassau County, New York, who were unhappy with what was known as the Regent’s prayer that kids recited in local schools. The prayer was a product of serious consideration and reflection by a group of ministers, priests, and rabbis. Quite remarkably for our times, it was endorsed by the New York Association of Secondary School Principals, the New York School Boards Association, and the New York Association of Judges of Children’s Courts.
The prayer read, “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country.”
A New York State judge—not a fan of school prayer—took the case and ruled in favor of the prayer. Two more levels of New York State judges ruled in favor of the prayer. The case eventually went to the Supreme Court and had been approved by 11 of 13 judges. The Supreme Court struck down school prayer by a 6-1 decision.
What happened afterward? The outrage was immediate, widespread, and intense. Every governor in the country, except for New York’s, condemned the decision. Newspapers all over the country condemned it. It was then that bumper stickers began appearing that called for the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren.
There was no widespread cultural call to end school prayer. The culture very much supported school prayer. Overturning it was the work of a few parents and six justices of the Supreme Court. Politics led; culture followed.
Three years later, the Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut that married couples have the constitutional right to contraceptives. It is true that Margaret Sanger and others, including pharmaceutical companies, ran campaigns in favor of “birth control.” Even so, by the 1950s, thirty states still prohibited the sale of contraceptives.
Contraceptives, most especially the “rubbers” found in gas station men’s rooms, were looked down upon by middle-class society. A mark of the phoniness of the Griswold decision is that Griswold herself was not an everyday citizen inconvenienced by the law; she was an activist who ran a Planned Parenthood clinic. Advocates worked on two tracks, culture and politics, and they eventually won through politics.
The same story can be told about Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton that imposed abortion on the country. There was not a groundswell of the culture calling for abortion. It was imposed through political means. Culture followed.
Was there a great cultural change concerning sodomy prior to the Lawrence v. Texas decision making it a constitutional right? No. Politics led; culture followed.
And then came Obergefell. We know for a fact that thirty-two states had already voted in favor of man-woman marriage, putting it either in state law or constitutions. Polls showed overwhelmingly that Americans were not prepared for same-sex marriage. And the voting booths of thirty-two states confirmed that. The culture was not calling for same-sex marriage. The Supreme Court imposed it. Politics imposed it. Culture followed.
Understand, there is nothing wrong with working on the culture. Nothing wrong with advancing the good, the true, and the beautiful. But working on these things does not and should not preclude working on politics. As we tend to say in Washington, D.C., it is not either-or, it is both/and.
The problem with “politics is downstream from culture” is that it may instill a kind of stasis in people: Well, I am raising my kids, and after all, we have that reading group that meets every month. Isn’t this how we change the culture? Isn’t this how we change politics way down the river? And all the while, right down the street, they are teaching sodomy to children.
Sure, learn swing dancing. Go to your reading group. But also, pound on the door of the local school board. Politics cannot wait for culture. Andrew Breitbart would agree. |
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