Two Dems Could Sabotage Bank Regulator Who Opposed Their Deregulatory Agenda

President Biden’s pick to police big banks fended off attacks from Republicans over her scholarship on climate risk, cryptocurrency, and financial regulation, as well as her personal history and background, at a heated confirmation hearing last Thursday.

But if Cornell Law School professor Saule Omarova falls short of confirmation, it will be because Democrats who collaborated with Republicans during the Trump administration on deregulating the financial sector resent that she called attention to their efforts at the time.

Omarova, who has made the case for green public investment in the Prospect, is Biden’s nominee for comptroller of the currency, a regulatory office in the Treasury Department that oversees national banks. Omarova gained prominence for her scholarship on how, beginning in the 1970s, regulators used regulation and interpretive guidance to erode the wall between banking and non-bank activities. For example, she has studied banks’ foray into commodity trading and other commercial ventures.

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But Democrats Mark Warner of Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana are among the key votes who could decide whether Omarova is confirmed. At the hearing, they sulked over her past criticism of a 2018 law they co-authored rolling back bank regulations. Tester said her critique of the law raised “serious concerns.” Warner said he was “pretty disappointed.”

Read more: https://prospect.org/economy/two-dems-could-sabotage-bank-regulator-who-opposed-deregulatory-agenda/
(American Prospect)