Surely someone in the Biden regime is trolling us all; nominating an unreformed communist as Comptroller of the Currency. Yet, this is neither an Onion nor a Babylon Bee story. Rather the Wall Street Journal editorial board cleared its collective throat to protest profusely. Still, trust but verify—too easy, the public record is clear and chilling. What is the Comptroller of the Currency, who is Saule Omarova, and why should you care? In short: a key position controlling our banking system, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union who believes the USSR centrally planned and controlled economy was better, fairer, more “democratic,” than the American economy, and the Democrats want to seize your checking and savings account.

I rolled my eyes until I read Omarova’s 2020 academic paper, a law review article, “The People’s Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy.” Yes, comrade the Democratic People’s Party choice for Comptroller of the Currency wants to seize your checking and savings account. How did we get here, and how did she get here?

The Comptroller of the Currency leads an office within the Treasury Department. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency was created by Congress in 1863, during the American Civil War, for the purpose of overseeing the creation and operation of national banks and a national currency. Today, the OCC is closely connected with the operation of the largest banks in America.

Saule Omarova: from Moscow University with Guile

Saule Omarova is a Kazakh, who was picked by the Communist Party cadre to attend Moscow State University. That is, she was supposed to be a local ethnic frontwoman helping keep the mostly Muslim and ethnically Turko-Mongol Kazakhs under the Russians’ socialist sway, or perhaps a token in Moscow for the international community. Oh, you won’t read this analysis, even on the Wall Street Journal editorial page, but this was the Cold War, and Kazakhstan was essential to Moscow’s space program, with the Baikonur Cosmodrome (also known as Tyuratam) used to this very day. Asian and African students were brought to Russian universities for propaganda purposes and to influence their home states. According to Saule Omarova’s CV, she excelled, receiving the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship her final year of undergraduate studies in philosophy. When the Soviet empire collapsed, Saule Omarova immigrated to the United States. While most USSR emigres left Marxism–Leninism behind, Omarova had another agenda, a long game by the evidence of her subsequent path through American institutions.

Saule Omarova was recruited into the University of Wisconsin Political Science graduate program, with a scholarship aimed at Moscow State University graduates, then completed her doctorate in 1999, on a MacArthur Foundation Scholarship in International Peace and Cooperation. She immediately transitioned to law school, graduating from Northwestern in 2001. From there, she was launched into a career in banking and finance law, on the Big Law side, and in government. Notably, George W. Bush’s team hired her briefly as a junior Treasury Department appointee, “Special Advisor for Regulatory Policy to the Under Secretary, Domestic Finance, July 2006 – July 2007.” So far, everything looks quite East Coast Establishment, Big Law, Big Finance.

Having checked the right establishment left boxes, Saule Omarova finally let her red flag fly around 2017, moving beyond polite academic debates over the merits of Glass-Steagall versus Dodd-Frank. Finally, in 2020, she took the hammer and sickle to the American economy, through the instruments of financial and monetary policy.

In 2017, Omarova advocates the creation of a National Investment Authority:

This Article proposes precisely such a response. It designs and advocates a new public instrumentality–a National Investment Authority (“NIA”)–charged with the critical task of devising and implementing a comprehensive long-term development strategy for the United States. [ . . . ] By creatively adapting familiar tools of financial and legal engineering, the NIA overcomes obstacles that ordinarily impede or discourage private investment in critically necessary and even transformative public infrastructure goods. By channeling presently speculative private capital back into the real economy, moreover, the NIA plays an important role in enhancing the resilience and stability of the U.S. and global financial systems.

Writing in the American Prospect in 2020, Omarova explained “why we need a National Investment Authority” to a general audience:

This is especially important as the growing threat of a severe post-pandemic depression increases the pressure on Congress to roll out potentially multiple additional rounds of fiscal stimulus. In that next phase of the crisis, we will have to start addressing deeper structural problems plaguing the nation’s economy: our eroding domestic industrial base, continuing fossil-fuel dependency, crumbling infrastructure, and crippling inequality, just to name a few.

[ . . . ]

Working with the Treasury and the Fed, the NIA will coordinate emergency assistance to, and manage public stakes in, troubled companies. The NIA’s professional asset-management teams will allocate congressionally appropriated funds, negotiate the terms of assistance, and run the portfolio of public assets—while following clear guidelines and maximizing the public’s overall welfare, instead of hoping that private actors will operate in that interest.

For example, the NIA’s guidelines could explicitly mandate maximizing payroll retention and uninterrupted provision of social services to employees and communities as part of any emergency assistance package. For large corporations, they could also condition bailouts on specific changes to their dividend and stock buyback policies and executive compensation [emphasis added]

Note the targets, the whole radical leftist agenda now being packaged in programs under the false flag of infrastructure investment and budget reconciliation. Of course, five-year plans worked so well back in the USSR. At least Saule Omarova and the folks at Pitchfork Economics seem to think so. Love the logo and website banner.

Saule Omarova does not like private cryptocurrency, for the real reason that it, like physical gold, cannot be easily seized and manipulated in the service of the vision of the anointed. Of course, Omarova says private cryptocurrency is potentially just too disruptive to the system and so against the real public interest.

She’s also cited the rapid rise of cryptocurrencies as “benefiting mainly the dysfunctional financial system we already have.” Omarova contends that digital tokens threaten to destabilize the economy and are vulnerable to abuse by private firms at the expense of public safeguards.

The article getting all the attention now is behind the SSRN paywall: “The People’s Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy.” It is pending publication in a future issue of the Vanderbilt Law Review. However, it appears Omarova posted an unlinked copy of “The People’s Ledger” draft on a leftist website listing her as a speaker and writer: the Law and Public Economy Project.

From the official abstract:

On the liability side of the ledger, the Article envisions the complete migration of demand deposit accounts to the Fed’s balance sheet and explores the full range of new, more direct and flexible, monetary policy tools enabled by this shift. On the asset side, it advocates a comprehensive qualitative restructuring of the Fed’s investment portfolio, which would maximize its capacity to channel credit to productive uses in the nation’s economy. This compositional overhaul of the Fed’s balance sheet would fundamentally alter the operations and systemic footprints of private banks, funds, derivatives dealers, and other financial institutions and markets. Analyzing these structural implications, the Article shows how the proposed reforms would make the financial system less complex, more stable, and more efficient in serving the long-term needs of the American people.

Surely she is kidding! No, and don’t call her Shirley. Here are the key paragraphs that jumped out to this layman’s eyes [emphasis added]:

This Article argues that a truly systemic democratization of finance demands a structural shift at the very core of this arrangement. The Article’s central claim is that, to achieve this goal, the Fed’s entire balance sheet should be redesigned to operate as what it calls the “People’s Ledger:” the ultimate public platform for both modulating and allocating the flow of sovereign credit and money in the national economy. On the liability side, the Article envisions the ultimate “end-state” whereby central bank accounts fully replace—rather than compete with— private bank deposits.

[ . . . ]

On the asset side, the Article lays out a bold proposal for restructuring the Fed’s investment portfolio and redirecting its credit-allocation power in qualitatively new ways. Under this proposal, the Fed’s principal asset holdings would fall into three categories: (1) redesigned “discount window” loans to qualifying lenders; (2) securities issued by existing and newlycreated public instrumentalities for purposes of financing large-scale public infrastructure projects; and (3) an expanded portfolio of trading assets maintained for purposes of financial market-stabilization.13 Together, these new investment choices would empower the Fed to channel greater quantities of credit to productive uses in the real economy far more directly and effectively than it can hope to do today. The proposed comprehensive restructuring of the Fed’s balance sheet would democratize not only access to financial services but the very process of generation and allocation of financial resources.

[ . . . ]

III. REFORMING THE LIABILITY SIDE: PUBLIC ACCESS AND MONETARY POLICY

Beginning with the liability side of the central bank balance sheet, this Article advocates the issuance of general-purpose CBDC (the “digital dollar”) and concurrent migration of all transaction deposit accounts from private banks to the Federal Reserve. Focusing on the ultimate “end-state” whereby central bank accounts fully replace—rather than uneasily co-exist with—private bank deposits, the Article explores the full range of new monetary policy options the proposed structural shift would enable.

A. The Proposal: FedAccounts as a Tool of Monetary Policy

[ . . . ]

The core idea here is simply to allow all U.S. citizens and lawful residents, local governments, non-banking firms and non-business entities to open transactional accounts directly with the Federal Reserve, thus bypassing private depository institutions. In this sense, it is a variation on the familiar FedAccounts—or FedCoin, “digital dollar wallets,” etc.—theme.116

In principle, FedAccounts can be made available as an alternative to bank deposit accounts, upon a person’s request.117 As explained below, however, the more effective option would be to transition all deposits to the Fed.118 Functionally, all FedAccounts will be essentially identical. For purely administrative purposes, however, it would be advisable to differentiate among “individual” and “entity” accounts. For U.S. citizens, Individual FedAccounts would be opened automatically upon birth or naturalization. These accounts would also be credited automatically with regularly received federal benefits: Social Security payments, tax refunds, and all other disbursements that depend on one’s citizenship status.119 For qualifying resident aliens, Individual FedAccounts would be opened and closed upon request, rather than automatically, but otherwise would function in the same manner.120 Entity FedAccounts could also be administratively divided into separate categories, depending on whether the holder is a government unit, a non-profit organization, or a business entity . . . .

[ . . . ]

[D]ynamically adjusting the cost of money rentals via manipulation of interest on FedAccounts is not the only—or even the most powerful—new monetary policy tool that the proposed reforms will put on the table. Far more importantly, offering deposit accounts to individuals and entities will enable the Fed to modulate the aggregate supply of money and credit by directly crediting and debiting the accounts of all participants in economic activity, without interposing intermediary-banks. In basic terms, the Fed will credit all eligible FedAccounts when it determines that it is necessary to expand the money supply in order to stimulate economic activity and ensure better utilization of the national economy’s productive capacity. In the economic literature, this form of unconventional (by present standards) monetary policy is commonly known as “helicopter drop” or “QE for the people.”124

[ . . . ]

Implementing a contractionary monetary policy by debiting FedAccounts, in turn, presents a different set of ex ante institutional choices aiming to minimize the economic and political fallout from what is likely to be perceived as the government “taking away” people’s money.130 This tool is to be reserved only for extreme and rare circumstances, when the Fed is unable to control inflation by raising interest rates and deploying its new asset-side tools, discussed below.131 It is nevertheless important to have a mechanism in place for draining excess liquidity from these accounts with minimal disruption of productive activity.

Yes. Every dollar you earn and save belongs to the State and can be ordered into a central government pot full of “individual accounts” all subject to direct manipulation, adding and removing funds according to the master planners’ latest scheme to direct our lives. What could possibly go wrong with the Biden Regime’s nomination of a stone-cold communist, aspiring to Central Committee membership, to take America back to the USSR? Listen to Niall Ferguson’s cautionary tale of the Bolshevik Revolution, delivered on the centennial of Red October.

The problem was that people underestimated Lenin & Co. They seemed an unruly bunch of intellectuals. No contemporary Western observer thought for a moment that their crackpot coup would last. Naive American bankers completely failed to appreciate that the Bolsheviks meant exactly what they said about defaulting on the entire czarist debt. No one foresaw that hereditary nobleman Ulyanov (to give Lenin his original name) was equally capable of ordering mass murder.

Consider that old Russians bore the images of Lenin and Stalin side-by-side in celebration of the communist regime, a regime Saule Omarova praised as more equitable than capitalism in America:

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." https://t.co/vvnx9DZICN

— Saule Omarova (@STOmarova) March 31, 2019

So, is this a master trolling operation, or a serious nomination? It is too dangerous to scoff and dismiss this nomination. Look back at what Saule Omarova says her newly designed national banking system can do, the priorities of a National Investment Authority. Map those against what the “progressives” in the House of Representatives have stuffed into a budget “reconciliation” bill, while the fools in the Republican Party and the conservative commentariat babel about the dollar figures. For crying out loud, CBS News “What’s in the $3.5 Trillion Reconciliation Bill” tells us the quiet part out loud about! This is not disjointed, any more than the rush of legislation in the first two years of Obama’s presidency.

Posters depicting Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin at a rally marking the 100th anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in downtown Moscow on Nov. 7. KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP/GETTY IMAGES