Politics

‘Quintessential A**hole Industry’: Biden Treasury Nominee Has Harsh Words For Financial Service Jobs

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President Joe Biden’s nominee for a top Treasury Department post had harsh words for the financial services sector, calling it an “a**hole industry,” in a Canadian documentary.

“The financial services industry, in my view, and I don’t think I’m alone here, is the quintessential a**hole industry,” Saule Omarova, Cornell University law professor and Biden nominee for comptroller of the currency, said in the documentary titled “Assholes: A Theory,” Fox News first reported.

Omarova has recently gained criticism for previous comments praising the Soviet Union’s lack of a “pay gap.”

“Until I came to the US, I couldn’t imagine that things like gender pay gap still existed in today’s world,” Omarova wrote in a tweet from 2019. “Say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn’t always ‘know best.'”

Until I came to the US, I couldn’t imagine that things like gender pay gap still existed in today’s world. Say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn’t always “know best.” https://t.co/vvnx9DZICN

— Saule Omarova (@STOmarova) March 31, 2019

The Cornell Law professor has also drawn scrutiny for a university thesis on Marxism she wrote during her time at Moscow State University in 1989, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported. Omarova has still refused to hand over her work titled “Karl Marx’s Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in The Capital,” for which she was given an Oct. 13 deadline.

Democratic Senator Jon Tester, a member of the Banking Committee, said he has “concerns” about Omarova after she expressed views that the Federal Reserve should effectively manage people’s bank accounts entirely and get rid of all private financial institutions, Politico reported.

“Under Professor Omarova’s radical plan, the government would replace the free market in how wages and prices are set,” Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, said in a statement Wednesday. “The government would control everything from the size of your paycheck to the amount you pay at the grocery store and the gas station.”

“The more I read the radical ideas that Professor Omarova has advocated for and considers the enormously harmful effects they would have on our economy, the more troubled I am by her nomination. I strongly urge President Biden to reconsider her decision to nominate her,” Toomey added.