October 14, 2021 5:08PM # What Economic Views Make a Nominee Too Extreme for High Office? By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE Washington Post columnist Charles Lane[ compares and contrasts](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/13/joe-biden-isnt-socialist-his-nominee-regulate-banks-has-pretty-radical-ideas-about-fed/) the “radical” views of Judy Shelton and Saule Omarova on money and banking. When President Trump nominated Shelton to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, her “gold-standard advocacy marked her as too far out of the mainstream.” But now President Biden has nominated Omarova, whose views are “if anything, more radical,” to a key financial regulation post, comptroller of the currency. Some Republicans wouldn’t go along with Shelton’s nomination. Will some Senate Democrats find Omarova a bridge too far? Judy Shelton, I note, has [spoken at the Cato Monetary Conference several times](https://www.cato.org/search/category/reviews-journals+cato-journal?query=judy+shelton), and during the debate over her nomination long-time conference director [Jim Dorn wrote](https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/fall-2020/how-classical-gold-standard-can-inform-monetary-policy#misguided-criticisms) that whether or not we want a gold standard, it’s not a “nutty” idea. Lane chides Shelton for saying that without fixed rules for the Fed “ ‘we might as well resurrect Gosplan,’ the Soviet Union’s planning agency.” Meanwhile, > Omarova considers the same Fed-bred profiteering \[that Shelton criticized\] — “collective action problems that create financial instability and hinder socially equitable economic growth,” as she puts it — but concludes that we might as well resurrect Gosplan. Well, maybe not *quite* Gosplan, but she does propose that the Fed simply replace commercial banking. Lane dryly points out that > Omarova graduated from Moscow State University in the late 1980s, before immigrating to the United States. This makes her confidence in the Fed’s ability to manage such a vast and complex portfolio efficiently, honestly and free of undue partisan influence doubly remarkable. Also in the Washington Post Lawrence H. Summers, a prominent economist who served in top economic positions in the Clinton and Obama administrations, [writes](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/07/banking-industry-is-throwing-stones-key-biden-nominee-it-lives-glass-house/), > As a substantive matter, I respect Omarova’s legal scholarship on financial regulation. But I also appreciate that, past a certain point, regulatory vigilance can become regulatory truculence and polarizes in a way that is not good for business or consumers. One can appreciate industry concerns about a nominee to this vital regulatory position who has advocated for Federal Reserve reforms that would, in Omarova’s words, “[effectively end banking as we know it](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/09/23/omarova-occ-wall-street/?itid=lk_inline_manual_5).” In her paper “[The People’s Ledger](https://lpeproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Peoples.Ledger.DRAFT_.pdf),” which Lane quoted, she wrote that the Fed should become “the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources in a modern economy.” The question is, as Lane noted, are there centrist Democratic senators who believe that this is not the answer for a modern market economy? ##### Related Tags [Banking and Finance](https://www.cato.org/banking-finance), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).