However, I cannot speak to whether Saule Omarova (Biden nominee) would be a competent banking regulator or what she thinks is the best banking policy. However, I think the following items are irrelevant to this nomination.
[1.]At the age of 28, she was arrested in 1995 for shoplifting. She admitted that she had stolen the goods. Although it was obviously bad behavior and I am not one to condone shoplifting, although it is considered a serious crime, it’s still seen as an insignificant crime. Even though it is 26 years ago, I think that this seems like a trivial matter, and one which does not relate to the qualities she has today.
[2.]It is believed that her Soviet Union upbringing influenced her ideas. Sen. Patrick Toomey opined that she “‘clearly has an aversion to anything like free-market capitalism,’ … citing examples of her academic work” (of course a perfectly legitimate criticism, if it fairly captures her work), and added, “You could ask yourself, ‘Where would a person even come up with these ideas?’ Maybe a factor that contributed to the problem could be if someone was born in the Soviet Union and later went on to Moscow State University.
However, many Americans born in the USA are not able to think up socialist ideas. Many people who were raised under the Soviet regime know the issues with such ideas. Instead of focusing on what she was actually thinking as a scholar (in an age and place when aspiring university students wouldn’t be wise to ignore a Lenin scholarship), let us focus on what her ideas were.
[3.]She wrote her thesis “Karl Marx’s Economic Analysis and The Theory of Revolution” [Das Kapital]The thesis was written in 1980s Soviet college, where Milton Friedman’s economic analysis is not likely to have been widely received. It appears that the thesis is unavailable. However, it seems unlikely we can draw any conclusions from what she wrote as a 22 year-old Soviet college student.
[4.]She didn’t quit the Young Communist Union Komsomol, which Soviet teens joined when they felt it was right for them. After that they grew out of it (until 1991). That particular questioning was conducted by Sen. John Kennedy.
Her work as scholar and her qualification are entirely up to her. I find it hard to believe that her critics would disagree with her. [are] singling her out because she is a woman and a minority”—I suspect they are singling her out because she’s a nominee of the opposite party, and that’s what one does nowadays. However, it is absurd to look back at her education for 30 years and then for 25 years for an indictment for minor offenses.