Thread by @RealBankReform

Biden nominated the brilliant immigrant Saule Omarova to oversee big banks. Opposition is a disgraceful mix:

➡️ Repub Red-baiting
➡️ #WallStreet scaremongering
➡️ Racism and sexism
➡️ Stupidity

Her real sin to them is speaking truth to Wall Street’s power

Here’s a 🧵 1/16

Omarova was born in Kazakhstan and emigrated to the US as Communism collapsed. Smart as they come, she went from a small town in central Asia to an American PhD, law degree, banking law firm of @DavisPolkReg, Bush Treasury and academia. Wow. 2/16

A senior Republican and bank lobbyists slimed her with McCarthy-style tactics.

@SenToomey, the top R on the Senate Banking Committee demanded her undergraduate thesis from a Moscow university

@PatrickMcHenry, top R on House Financial Services Committee, joined in too

3/16

Now, back when Trump appointed Jelena McWilliams, immigrant from formerly Communist Serbia, to run the FDIC, Republicans fawned over her.

Why no similar admiration for Omarova? Because she won't do favors for Wall Street. 4/16

Right-wing ideologues went nuts.

Richard Viguerie pioneered direct mail fundraising by conservatives, starting a long tradition of grift. He laid into Omarova.

He’s also a flat-out racist who made common cause with the White Citizens’ Council, a rebranded KKK. 5/16

Bank lobbyists joined the “stop the Commie nonsense,” per @FlitterOnFraud.

People like Greg Baer (@baerheel) head of the Bank Policy Institute (@bankpolicy), which reps big banks. This alum of @jpmorgan and @WilmerHale is a red-baiter now. 6/16

Wall Street lobbies, @ABABankers, ICBA, @bankpolicy, are in some interesting company on the extremist Internet.

Are these the junkyard dogs that the bank lobby has hired? Or do they come by this nuttery naturally? 7/16

Randal Guynn of the big banking law firm @DavisPolkReg has also engaged in red-baiting in public in response to Omarova, e.g. “Well that may be how they do it in Kazakhstan …”

Maybe because she totally owned him at a Senate hearing, as @iamjohnoliver reported. 8/16

Community banking does a lotta good when done right, so it was a shame to see the incoming ICBA, partake in the crazy.

Their incoming chair joined in, apparently without absorbing how much Omarova is an ally of small banks! 9/16

As head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the agency that oversees big banks, Omarova would be in a position to do something about biggies that community banks dislike so much.

She calls out #WallStreet BS, something one financial analyst noted 10/16

@BankersPrez Rob Nichols, head of @ABABankers resorted to a light version of red-baiting. #PinkBaiting ?

Without saying “Commie,” he grabs a single phrase from a 60-page paper among the thousands of pages Omarova has written to suggest she’d behave like one. 11/16

What’s happening to Omarova here is horrifying, but all-too-common.

It’s an incendiary racializing and gendering of someone who is not a white guy, and willing to speak truth to (financial) power.

Don’t buy it? Read the research: bit.ly/GenderRace 12/16

The word “currency” is in the title of the agency, so expect some confusion re what the OCC does. Name has historical reasons but it’s a bank regulator.

The National Review, fancying itself intellectual, illustrated its tirade with a picture of dollar bills. Minor oops. 13/16

Behold sheer stupidity from disgraced Fox Newser Bill O’Reilly. Says that Biden has:
➡️ Already “appointed” her (has to be confirmed) Omarova
➡️ That she’s “in charge of the currency” (nope)
➡️ That she's “not a capitalist” (wrong)
➡️ & can’t pronounce “Kazakhstan”

14/16

So why do the bankers like @ABABankers and @bankpolicy so dislike Omarova? Simple: she knows where Wall Street buried the bodies.

She knows and calls out the misdeeds of big banks that have made them so rich, and is ready to do something about it. 15/16

Lobbyists have embraced the cruel, toxic mixture of xenophobia, racism, red-baiting, and the sexism that lurks, at least, when a woman gets up in Wall Street’s grill (Elizabeth Warren, anybody?), to stop her nomination.

It’s about the 💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰

16/END

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