Comptroller Nominee on Coal and Natural Gas: ”We want them to go bankrupt.”
State Treasurer Riley Moore today announced he and a coalition of State Treasurers and financial officers are strongly urging the U.S. Senate to reject President Joe Biden’s radical Comptroller of the Currency nominee Saule Omarova, who has said she wants to ‘bankrupt’ the coal and natural gas industries and proposed to ‘end banking as we know it.’
“The nomination of Saule Omarova to be our nation’s top banking regulator is just the latest salvo in this administration’s war on American energy and our financial freedoms,” Treasurer Moore said. “We cannot allow control of our nation’s banking industry to fall to someone who has openly declared she wants to bankrupt West Virginia’s coal and natural gas industries.”
President Biden nominated Omarova, a Cornell University law professor, to serve as Comptroller of the Currency, an independent Treasury Department agency which charters, regulates and supervises all national banks and federal savings associations as well as federal branches and agencies of foreign banks. Her nomination must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Treasurer Moore has joined a coalition of 21 State Treasurers and financial officers in a letter to the Biden administration formally opposing the nomination. Treasurer Moore is also encouraging West Virginia’s Senators to oppose Omarova’s nomination, should her confirmation be brought up for a vote.
Originally from Kazakhstan, Omarova attended Moscow State University on a Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship. In 2019, she tweeted about the United States’ gender pay gap by saying, “Say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn't always ‘know best.’”
“This radical nominee has proposed moving all private consumer bank accounts to the Federal Reserve, turning the Fed’s balance sheet into the ‘People’s Ledger’ for centrally planned investments, and stifling the rise of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin through aggressive government regulation,” Treasurer Moore said. “These are the kind of ideas one would expect from central planners in Communist China, not the chief regulator of the American banking system.”
Treasurer Moore said her nomination be especially disastrous for West Virginia’s coal and natural gas industries.
“Most concerning for West Virginia, Omarova has declared the administration needs to bankrupt coal, natural gas and oil industries to combat climate change – completely disrespecting our hardworking coal miners and natural gas workers, and flying in the face of our very way of life,” Treasurer Moore said.
Additionally, Omarova has proposed creating a ‘National Investment Authority’ to address climate change and other liberal social issues because she believes ‘greedy Wall Street’ hasn’t done enough to stop investments in fossil fuels.
Treasurer Moore, who has already led a coalition of 15 state Treasurers to oppose previous Biden administration attempts to eliminate investment in the fossil fuel industry, said he will strongly encourage West Virginia’s Senators to speak out and vote against Omarova’s nomination.
“President Biden has already tried to bully banks in into divesting from coal, oil and natural gas, he’s proposed weaponizing the IRS by giving them access to people’s private bank data, and now he’s put forward a banking regulator who wants to eliminate the banking system as we know it – this anti-American agenda must be stopped,” Treasurer Moore said.
“America’s capitalist economy and banking system has been and continues to be a beacon for economic freedom around the globe,” Treasurer Moore said. “We cannot turn control of our banking system to someone who wants to use it to advance liberals’ radical socialist agenda. I strongly urge our allies in Congress to vote against this dreadful nominee.”
A copy of the letter opposing Omarova’s nomination can be viewed here: https://bit.ly/31VR08S.