> Yet Omarova said she was unable to express her views personally to many senators, as is usually the norm in confirmation hearings. She noted that despite making clear she was willing to meet with lawmakers as many times as needed, only one Republican senator, Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyoming, met with her.
To me, that read like Senators could come to here one-on-one and talk. That's good to have that door open. But it's not like she was muzzled at the hearings. That's her main chance to express her views to the senators.
Because she was a red herring. Her nomination was designed to soften the next nominee’s views, everyone knew it, everyone knew she would be ultimately pulled, and any time spent with her was a waste. Democrats met with her for optics.
> President Biden’s controversial pick to be the Treasury Department’s comptroller of the currency is a USSR-born and educated professor who has praised the former Soviet Union’s lack of a gender pay gap while recently advocating for ending banking “as we know it” by moving Americans’ finances from private banks to the Federal Reserve.
It is related the praise of lack of pay gap and the suggested changes? The article seems to link both not explicitly but letting the reader to get to that conclusion.
I hope that pay gap between genders is reduced and everybody gets a fair opportunity.
The idea that women are treated better in the USSR is insane. Please go visit Russia and tell me that. It's the most sexist developed society I've dealt with.
They're not, but often, the wealthier the country, the more the difference in pay between men and women because women can simply get whatever job they're interested in without regard to the money.
If you are in India or Russia, the difference between being a programmer vs local laborer is extreme, so anyone who can become a programmer (or similar high paying job for multi-national company) will. Thus, Russia and India have more female programmers (and similar) than the US.
It’s better to check statistic data. Gender pay gap existed in USSR, was comparable to the Western countries and didn’t go anywhere after 1991. Russia leaned to the right and became more socially conservative since then. It is indeed a very sexist society now.
Which is silly without evidence I agree. So, with no experience what value does she have? There's nothing in her academic work that shows some outstanding quality. Is she in ideologue? If so, of what type?
Well, she’s not a communist but her ideas about the federal government taking over and centrally directing all fiscal activities would make Hugo Chavez blush.
You have to like such blatant partiality in the coverage: “USSR-born and educated”, the insistence on “ending banking as we know it” while waiting five paragraphs to actually explain it’s about splitting the lending activity from the management of people accounts and has nothing to do with the Soviet Union, the completely irrelevant quotation on the gender pay gap. I really like American media. They are so bad they make even the terrible ones in my country look half decent.
"This Article... offers a blueprint for a comprehensive restructuring of the central bank balance sheet as the basis for redesigning the core architecture of modern finance. Focusing on the U.S. Federal Reserve System (the Fed), the Article outlines a series of structural reforms that would radically redefine the role of a central bank as the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources in a democratic economy—the People’s Ledger.
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."
The Wall Street Journal described her as "a one-person systemic risk to the banking system" but directed readers, "Give Ms. Omarova credit for candor," for she was quite honest and open about her intentions in this area.
Omarova suggested the central bank could offer bank accounts to everyday Americans, which would represent a dramatic departure from the way the banking system is currently set up.
Enthusiastically this! The payment system is essential infrastructure, with the demise of cash it will become effectively impossible to function in society without access to banking. Meanwhile, this service is provided by for profit agents that can deny your business for no reason and rely on an arcane industry of background checks and trafficked personal data to select their clientele.
Mind you, I'm talking about free payment services, the process of receiving and sending money, and a possible free debit payment network operated by the government, that guarantees service to anyone. If you need credit, you go to a bank, they can and should make money out of this, not by simply forming a payment cartel extracting rent from all businesses and citizens.
I'm not sure how to figure out which situation results in more scrutiny and due process. I can buy that private corporations are under-policed, but I'm not sure the government would police itself either. Maybe the best is a kind of adversarial relationship between the public and private entities? Anyone know of compelling studies on what ultimately is best practice for compliance?
> I'm not sure the government would police itself either
One would assume that if the law was intended that everyone can have a bank account, then ultimately one would be able to appeal through the courts. Which are not perfect, but are a hell of a lot better than a company just being able to make it's own decision without having to justify it.
Of course, you could have a governmental setup without this aim. And you could regulate the private market. But generally speaking governmental organisations are held to higher standards and have less incentive to be non-compliant.
> But generally speaking governmental organisations are held to higher standards and have less incentive to be non-compliant
Citation needed. I’ve seen precisely the opposite. What’s needed is external pressure to be a good actor. The courts can do that to a government - in a country with very strong institutions. With a decent number of competing banks and a strong regulator, you can get very far
> One would assume that if the law was intended that everyone can have a bank account, then ultimately one would be able to appeal through the courts
Maybe we should first socialize the legal industry, such that suing the government is actually a realistic option for the common person who, at present, cannot afford to hire lawyers for something like that.
There's clearly _some_ push-and-shove that happens some of the time, officials get fired for ethics violations, laws get changed, politicians lose re-election. I don't think it's worthwhile to be reductive, there's got to be a quantitative way to compare how different compliance schemes tend to fare.
And political wrangling. And moral panics. And "national emergencies". And just about every other political abuse you can imagine.
That's without getting into the weeds of how well they would do at it implementation or how much it would cost.
Government could just do all the farming and manufacturing and food distribution also. Probably not very well and people would be much worse off and the system would be abused by those in power. Same concepts apply to this.
Single responsibility principal, as much as possible, is an efficient idea.
Government's job is to regulate. If there are problems with the current system that is largely a failure of regulation.
Then people could choose. The choice cuts both ways by providing a pragmatic path for government market constraint as an alternative to the cat and mouse games of exquisitely intricate regulations.
Not nearly to the extent directly controlling all transactions would give them.
Not even close.
What you are talking about is things like sanctioning foreign firms or individuals. Yes, the IRS could also come after your bank accounts but it takes some work and isn't suitable for mass population control.
Governments have that power already. Various AML legislation can make any high street bank to not only block your account without reason util you prove your innocence, you can't even withdraw any of your money in cash. It happened to me in the UK, my account blocked with no reason for weeks until I summited all documentation. I was a foreign student at the time, almost destroyed me, no money for rent etc.
In any case, it's a orthogonal issue, government power vs democratic accountability, the highly regulated private banking system certainly does not protect you against it, they will do whatever the government asks of them as long as they can maintain their key rent extraction monopolies.
If there were government bank accounts, there wouldn't be instances of banks closing accounts for people's politics. The government bank would have to issue accounts for everyone because of first amendment protections
I want the end of private banking for your average deposit accounts [1]. Commercial banks don't make money off the accounts unless they can charge extortionate fees (overdrafts) [2], and credit/debit interchange is going down drastically when Fed instant payments roll out in 2023 (they are showcasing functional apps/use cases internally in the next few months, and are on schedule for their go live date). Government is accountable to its citizens, commercial banks to their shareholders. The logical conclusion is to offer deposit accounts and instant payments to all as a utility, and support infrastructure to allow other institutions (private banks, fintechs, etc) to extend credit.
But to equate public good deposit accounts, simple rows in a database tracking fiat, with communism is grossly disingenuous. Shall I defend the US Post Office, Social Security, and Medicare (other wildly successful public goods with high approval ratings) against being painted as "communism" as well? These are fundamental components and public goods of a developed society, and financial infrastructure falls into such a category (as you cannot live without it, and if you attempt to, you are going to learn how expensive and hard it is to be unbanked/underbanked).
I am familiar with fractional reserve banking. Banks can obtain capital through other mechanisms than deposit accounts (CDs, bonds, etc) to enable their lending operations (mortgage debt, credit card debt, and auto loans are already securitized on the bond market, for example) and profit off of the (hopefully properly risk managed) spread. Commercial banks are not entitled to the deposits of citizens, nor should citizens have their financial lives beholden to commercial banks rent seeking off of their deposit accounts and cashflow. To your point about "giving this control to government", they already have it; they are the ones who set reserve requirements and oversee commercial banks (by way of the Fed and the OCC). Wells Fargo, Chase, and Bank of America are what soviet run banks would look like; wide spread abuses without sufficient repercussions to disincentivize reoccurrences (Wells [1]) and poor service for customers with the spoils funneled to the top (JPMC and BoA).
Sounds roughly the same time a checking account earned interest? My point was that banks have other avenues of obtaining operating capital for lending operations.
If only we had a technology solution to payments and money transfer that didn’t depend on the whims of anyone, some sort of distributed cryptographically secured system?
The vast majority of US dollar transactions happen off of the Fed's official ledger. Similarly, the vast majority of bitcoin transactions need not happen on the blockchain. That's probably already the case today.
The problem with bitcoin today is that the price is too volatile. Bitcoin proponents believe that can change with time and increasing adoption.
I explained the first statement in the rest of the comment. I don't think I understand what you're asking for. Or maybe you're referring to the second statement?
I was asking for what systems currently in use can support that transaction rate. Based on my research no current crypto system comes remotely close to being able to handle the TPS needed.
You can have transactions denominated in crypto using conventional database technology.
This happens when people buy crypto using PayPal or Cash App or Robinhood, and at least thousands of times a second worldwide on crypto exchanges.
More generally, there is nothing stopping anyone from making a "PayPal of crypto" or a "Zelle of crypto."
In my mind, this is no way defeats the purpose of bitcoin. Bitcoin is like a Euro but for the whole world (which would never be politically achievable), plus cannot be manipulated (in terms of supply and interest rates) by a central bank (I think a huge plus, but obviously this is controversial). The point of bitcoin is not to be able to do illegal things on a blockchain.
Personally, I don't care about the other (i.e. non-bitcoin) cryptocurrencies. There's some interesting tech there that could change the world, but defi and smart contracts are addressing totally different things than bitcoin is.
There aren't a lot of projects that surpass Visa's TPS speed of 1700. The one legitimate contender that I can think of is Solana with TPS of ~50K transactions. The problem, however, is that it's still fairly centralized.
> The payment system is essential infrastructure...
You know that almost everything can be nationalized using that logic, right? You like Commie blocks? Because this is how you herd 99% of the population into concrete tubes while the elite enjoy their sprawling ranches surrounded by federally protected wildlife reserves.
> Because this is how you herd 99% of the population into concrete tubes while the elite enjoy their sprawling ranches surrounded by federally protected wildlife reserves.
Come on, you don’t need communism for that. Modern capitalism has already brought us there.
Can you make an intelectual argument as opposed to a 3rd grade level analogy?
Let me help you: the road system is a public service in all free market economies. There was a period in UK and US history where some important roads were private, but it's no longer true today for the vast majority of roads.
Can you explain it? Why did western capitalist countries chose to build "communist roads"? Do you believe a 100% private road system would be an improvement over the current situation? Can you explain the main economic characteristics of roads as a service, and counterpoise them to payment systems?
So your idea of elevating the debate is "who will build the road?!1!!", seriously?
> Can you explain it? Why did western capitalist countries chose to build "communist roads"?
Yes, I can explain it. The cold war. You know, that one time when we fought an ideology of centralized planning and authority by centralizing a massive amount of authority. Your power words: Eisenhower, federal highway act, ICBM turning radius.
What a daft answer. The roads are publicly owned and operated in all existing free market countries, even those that were never involved in the cold war or had any nuclear weapons. Handwaving fundamental economic features of public infrastructure only shows you are ill prepared for such a debate, but don't let that stop you from plastering ideological epithets and calling everyone who doesn't agree "communists".
There is an apocryphal story about Lenin who allegedly had an expression denoting people that can easily weaponized to fight for causes the implications of which they don't fully comprehend: useful idiots.
A lame answer that happens to directly, and accurately, answer your question... better move the goal posts. I'm sure Lenin would strongly disapprove of a strategy wherein everything is regarded as a right to be overseen by the government, and proponents for said argument wouldn't be "useful idiots" at all.
I'm late to this thread, but the two of you broke the site guidelines badly. We ban accounts that engage in this sort of tedious flamewar. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on.
I'm late to this thread, but the two of you broke the site guidelines badly. We ban accounts that engage in this sort of tedious flamewar. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on.
> "ICBA and state community banking associations took the rare step of publicly opposing – in a detailed letter – a prudential banking regulator nominee because of Professor Omarova's published scholarship and public statements advocating government allocation of capital and credit, 'fully replacing' private bank deposits, and 'ending banking as we know it'-which would displace community banks, local communities, and small businesses," it said.
If that's accurate, then I would expect them to use that to sink her chances, and I would consider it perfectly fair and reasonable for them to do so.
On the other hand, we have her claiming that they were distorting her record. So, did she say those things, or not? If she did, did she mean them, or not?
Read through the article and you'll see, for example, she wants the NIA to invest in private companies in order to obtain voting rights to control those companies.
The smear of "communism" is a cheap shot that was pretty easy to make because of her background, but frankly her views end up coming pretty close to central planning, and that also makes it easy to accuse someone of being a communist.
> Most senators condemned her because Omarova has proposed nationalizing the American financial system, empowering the Federal Reserve to take over consumer deposits, and “effectively end[ing] banking, as we know it.” It is Omarova who proposed a “National Investment Authority,” a nomenklatura that would redistribute your money into a “big and bold” climate agenda. This, after she recommended that states bankrupt private energy companies so we can “basically get rid of these carbon financiers” by “starv[ing] them of their source of capital.” The woman wrote a paper titled “The People’s Ledger” last year. Then, there is Omarova’s pernicious defense of the USSR’s lack of “a gender pay gap.”
>Omarova is free to kick around theories with her “Marxist Analysis and Policy” Facebook group, but she’s not afforded any special dispensation allowing her to avoid answering for her positions and past comments. Senator John Kennedy brought up her memberships and academic work in the Soviet Union to argue that she hadn’t changed her position today, not that she is bonded to them forever. If you don’t want your nominees to be referred to as “comrade,” don’t nominate socialists who praise the Soviet Union.
John Kennedy, or as we like to call him here in New Orleans, Foghorn Leghorn, has never met a foreign origin person he doesn’t want to throw to the dogs as red meat for the cameras.
I did. Kennedy doesn’t care about the timeframe of the Soviet bit. He just wants a five second soundbite for his constituents. If he was talking to Bernie he’d bring up his honeymoon too. I’m also not a National Review subscriber so I can’t read the whole thing.
There is a vocal section of the Senate that views experience as a disqualifier. Particularly for finance. This might have been a trial balloon. It might have been part of a broader deal that fell through. It might be a red herring.
Well, this is an administration that has proposed monitoring any transaction $600 or greater, which is a massive departure from the $10,000 limit.
A proposal like hers for a government issued bank account falls right into the federal surveillance state insofar as everyone's finances are concerned.
There's no better way to erode 4th amendment protections for your finances than a federally issued bank account.
It's not an unreasonable slippery slope to imagine that such an account would eventually morph to the point (1) where many or most of your counter parties are using the federal bank account meaning that they know about most of the transactions occurring in private accounts, and (2) where merely using a non federal account they have access to could be maligned as suspicious.
There's no direction these proposals head that don't result in more tyranny from a federal government that we have increasingly less representation and oversight over.
I’ve asked myself this about many Biden appointees. He seems to be using identity politics to select political appointees rather than any sort of experience or qualifications.
I'm unsure why this was downvoted. This is absolutely par for the course these days. Identity is a increasingly a major factor when deciding between candidates for any position both in the public and private sector.
> Ms. Omarova wants to put an “‘end to banking’ as we know it”—again, her words—and transfer private banking functions to the Federal Reserve, where accounts would “fully replace” private bank deposits. The Fed would control “systemically important prices” for fuel, food, raw materials, metals, natural resources, home prices and wages.
> She says the Fed should be remade into what she calls “The People’s Ledger.” By “the people” she means progressive elites like her. She calls for “reimagining” the role of central banks “as the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources in a modern economy.”
Anyone who openly advocates for wide price controls like the ought to be ridiculed away from public office. Just as anti-science as being antivax in my view.
The FED already controls prices. That’s in its mission: keeping prices stable and limiting unemployment. The ECB is even worth: it’s sole mission is keeping inflation at 2%. The WSJ coverage is just poor.
The Fed does not set prices. It tries to keep inflation down but not by diktat -- instead it uses policy tools like the federal funds rate which causes a ripple effect throughout the banking system.
Where did I write that the Fed set prices? Where did you read that Omarova wanted the Fed to set prices?
Omarova wants the Fed to exercise more control on prices. The commenter I was replying to implied this was crazy despite the Fed already controlling prices. The fact that it does so through a set of different financial tools (the federal funds rate is only one of them) is not really relevant to this point.
I don't think you should be able to run for public office at all if you are a first generation immigrant. We don't allow it for president and we shouldn't allow it for any other office either.
These people need to understand why America is the way it is first.
You know the tides are turning right? You people are on the wrong side of history.
Your vax mandates, your concentration camps, your socialists in charge of banking. It is coming all crashing down. America is waking up. You all are going to be in a serious set of dire circumstances rather soon.
> A 2020 article [2] written by Omarova that suggests the need for a government-controlled “people’s ledger” that would “end banking as we know it” has caused further friction over her nomination, with some reports suggesting that moderate Democrats may oppose her appointment. [1]
"People's ledger" controlled by government. Love it.
I think her own words about this proposal (government banking) sunk her nomination faster than any banks or opponents could have. Basically it came under friendly fire that she initiated herself.
I doubt the politicians who railed against Omarova understood her proposed changes to the Fed. Only a single Republican agreed to meet with her so she could explain her ideas. I looked at her paper, and it's dense and (at least for me) hard to read. Her ideas may be good, and they may be bad. But, I personally don't feel qualified to make a judgement one way or the other. It's not my field of expertise.
NPR once again provides a balanced, fair piece of journalism.
Except they forgot to mention things like she harbors deep animosity towards the finance industry and has called it ‘a quintessential a—hole industry’.
They also forget to mention that she's said cryptocurrencies benefits the “dysfunctional financial system we already have” and could destabilize the economy, etc.
132 comments
[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 204 ms ] threadWe already know from the behavior of the current Biden regime and the Squad what Marxism looks like, and nobody wants more of the same.
Omarova had her chances to clarify her positions during testimony, and her own party did not have the votes to push her confirmation though.
Why do you think that might be?
This context is important. Refusing to meet senators on their terms while demanding they meet you on yours seems like a power play.
It is related the praise of lack of pay gap and the suggested changes? The article seems to link both not explicitly but letting the reader to get to that conclusion.
I hope that pay gap between genders is reduced and everybody gets a fair opportunity.
If you are in India or Russia, the difference between being a programmer vs local laborer is extreme, so anyone who can become a programmer (or similar high paying job for multi-national company) will. Thus, Russia and India have more female programmers (and similar) than the US.
https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/minority/toomey-on-p...
"This Article... offers a blueprint for a comprehensive restructuring of the central bank balance sheet as the basis for redesigning the core architecture of modern finance. Focusing on the U.S. Federal Reserve System (the Fed), the Article outlines a series of structural reforms that would radically redefine the role of a central bank as the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources in a democratic economy—the People’s Ledger.
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."
The Wall Street Journal described her as "a one-person systemic risk to the banking system" but directed readers, "Give Ms. Omarova credit for candor," for she was quite honest and open about her intentions in this area.
Enthusiastically this! The payment system is essential infrastructure, with the demise of cash it will become effectively impossible to function in society without access to banking. Meanwhile, this service is provided by for profit agents that can deny your business for no reason and rely on an arcane industry of background checks and trafficked personal data to select their clientele.
Mind you, I'm talking about free payment services, the process of receiving and sending money, and a possible free debit payment network operated by the government, that guarantees service to anyone. If you need credit, you go to a bank, they can and should make money out of this, not by simply forming a payment cartel extracting rent from all businesses and citizens.
But if governments had that power what might happen?
One would assume that if the law was intended that everyone can have a bank account, then ultimately one would be able to appeal through the courts. Which are not perfect, but are a hell of a lot better than a company just being able to make it's own decision without having to justify it.
Of course, you could have a governmental setup without this aim. And you could regulate the private market. But generally speaking governmental organisations are held to higher standards and have less incentive to be non-compliant.
Citation needed. I’ve seen precisely the opposite. What’s needed is external pressure to be a good actor. The courts can do that to a government - in a country with very strong institutions. With a decent number of competing banks and a strong regulator, you can get very far
Maybe we should first socialize the legal industry, such that suing the government is actually a realistic option for the common person who, at present, cannot afford to hire lawyers for something like that.
Has it ever?
That's without getting into the weeds of how well they would do at it implementation or how much it would cost.
Government could just do all the farming and manufacturing and food distribution also. Probably not very well and people would be much worse off and the system would be abused by those in power. Same concepts apply to this.
Single responsibility principal, as much as possible, is an efficient idea.
Government's job is to regulate. If there are problems with the current system that is largely a failure of regulation.
What you are talking about is things like sanctioning foreign firms or individuals. Yes, the IRS could also come after your bank accounts but it takes some work and isn't suitable for mass population control.
This is and that's unacceptable.
In any case, it's a orthogonal issue, government power vs democratic accountability, the highly regulated private banking system certainly does not protect you against it, they will do whatever the government asks of them as long as they can maintain their key rent extraction monopolies.
But to equate public good deposit accounts, simple rows in a database tracking fiat, with communism is grossly disingenuous. Shall I defend the US Post Office, Social Security, and Medicare (other wildly successful public goods with high approval ratings) against being painted as "communism" as well? These are fundamental components and public goods of a developed society, and financial infrastructure falls into such a category (as you cannot live without it, and if you attempt to, you are going to learn how expensive and hard it is to be unbanked/underbanked).
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=fedaccounts
[2] https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/m...
Giving this control to the government is a bad idea and will lead to the solviet-zation of the banking industry.
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/now/wells-fargo-scandals-the-complete-...
You know who had public transport? The USSR. Public transport is as bad as an idea as communism.
Argue on the merits of something, not because a county had it or didn't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_communist_...
Is that enough for you? Get off the internet and go read a book.
Why would you downvote? You approve of mass murder?
The vast majority of US dollar transactions happen off of the Fed's official ledger. Similarly, the vast majority of bitcoin transactions need not happen on the blockchain. That's probably already the case today.
The problem with bitcoin today is that the price is too volatile. Bitcoin proponents believe that can change with time and increasing adoption.
This happens when people buy crypto using PayPal or Cash App or Robinhood, and at least thousands of times a second worldwide on crypto exchanges.
More generally, there is nothing stopping anyone from making a "PayPal of crypto" or a "Zelle of crypto."
In my mind, this is no way defeats the purpose of bitcoin. Bitcoin is like a Euro but for the whole world (which would never be politically achievable), plus cannot be manipulated (in terms of supply and interest rates) by a central bank (I think a huge plus, but obviously this is controversial). The point of bitcoin is not to be able to do illegal things on a blockchain.
Personally, I don't care about the other (i.e. non-bitcoin) cryptocurrencies. There's some interesting tech there that could change the world, but defi and smart contracts are addressing totally different things than bitcoin is.
How garbage like Bitcoin is still popular blows my mind. $10 for a single transaction?
You know that almost everything can be nationalized using that logic, right? You like Commie blocks? Because this is how you herd 99% of the population into concrete tubes while the elite enjoy their sprawling ranches surrounded by federally protected wildlife reserves.
Come on, you don’t need communism for that. Modern capitalism has already brought us there.
lol, the qualifier deserves highlighting here: crony capitalism. What mechanism is being wielded here? It certainly isn't the AAPL private military.
Let me help you: the road system is a public service in all free market economies. There was a period in UK and US history where some important roads were private, but it's no longer true today for the vast majority of roads.
Can you explain it? Why did western capitalist countries chose to build "communist roads"? Do you believe a 100% private road system would be an improvement over the current situation? Can you explain the main economic characteristics of roads as a service, and counterpoise them to payment systems?
So your idea of elevating the debate is "who will build the road?!1!!", seriously?
> Can you explain it? Why did western capitalist countries chose to build "communist roads"?
Yes, I can explain it. The cold war. You know, that one time when we fought an ideology of centralized planning and authority by centralizing a massive amount of authority. Your power words: Eisenhower, federal highway act, ICBM turning radius.
There is an apocryphal story about Lenin who allegedly had an expression denoting people that can easily weaponized to fight for causes the implications of which they don't fully comprehend: useful idiots.
“We don’t need a warrant to see your banking transactions since the government itself provides the service”.
If that's accurate, then I would expect them to use that to sink her chances, and I would consider it perfectly fair and reasonable for them to do so.
On the other hand, we have her claiming that they were distorting her record. So, did she say those things, or not? If she did, did she mean them, or not?
Read through the article and you'll see, for example, she wants the NIA to invest in private companies in order to obtain voting rights to control those companies.
The smear of "communism" is a cheap shot that was pretty easy to make because of her background, but frankly her views end up coming pretty close to central planning, and that also makes it easy to accuse someone of being a communist.
>Omarova is free to kick around theories with her “Marxist Analysis and Policy” Facebook group, but she’s not afforded any special dispensation allowing her to avoid answering for her positions and past comments. Senator John Kennedy brought up her memberships and academic work in the Soviet Union to argue that she hadn’t changed her position today, not that she is bonded to them forever. If you don’t want your nominees to be referred to as “comrade,” don’t nominate socialists who praise the Soviet Union.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/sorry-omarovas-soviet-...
Also as another commenter points out the government can already control access to private banking like a spigot quite well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29559738
There is a vocal section of the Senate that views experience as a disqualifier. Particularly for finance. This might have been a trial balloon. It might have been part of a broader deal that fell through. It might be a red herring.
A proposal like hers for a government issued bank account falls right into the federal surveillance state insofar as everyone's finances are concerned.
There's no better way to erode 4th amendment protections for your finances than a federally issued bank account.
It's not an unreasonable slippery slope to imagine that such an account would eventually morph to the point (1) where many or most of your counter parties are using the federal bank account meaning that they know about most of the transactions occurring in private accounts, and (2) where merely using a non federal account they have access to could be maligned as suspicious.
There's no direction these proposals head that don't result in more tyranny from a federal government that we have increasingly less representation and oversight over.
> She says the Fed should be remade into what she calls “The People’s Ledger.” By “the people” she means progressive elites like her. She calls for “reimagining” the role of central banks “as the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources in a modern economy.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-regulator-who-hates-banks-sau...
Maybe she was a bit too radical for such an important post?
Funny, all the "reporting" mentioned here seems to come from NewsCorp properties. And is "reporting" like the above.
I'm not defending her, I'd honestly like to know more. But I'd like to read it from a trustworthy source.
Especially considering how much bullshit redbaiting is going on around this - you get that when they don't have anything better to throw.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3715735
Omarova wants the Fed to exercise more control on prices. The commenter I was replying to implied this was crazy despite the Fed already controlling prices. The fact that it does so through a set of different financial tools (the federal funds rate is only one of them) is not really relevant to this point.
She is as red as they come.
These people need to understand why America is the way it is first.
You know the tides are turning right? You people are on the wrong side of history.
Your vax mandates, your concentration camps, your socialists in charge of banking. It is coming all crashing down. America is waking up. You all are going to be in a serious set of dire circumstances rather soon.
Here's the Independent Community Bankers of America letter, for instance: https://www.icba.org/docs/default-source/icba/advocacy-docum...
"People's ledger" controlled by government. Love it.
[1] https://www.rferl.org/a/saule-omarova-biden-soviet-union-com... [2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3715735
Who actually is running the White House right now?
Except they forgot to mention things like she harbors deep animosity towards the finance industry and has called it ‘a quintessential a—hole industry’.
They also forget to mention that she's said cryptocurrencies benefits the “dysfunctional financial system we already have” and could destabilize the economy, etc.
[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bidens-banking-watchdog-pi...