Charles Gasparino

Charles Gasparino

Opinion

Who’s in charge? Biden letting lefty Warren call the fin-reg shots

Who elected Elizabeth Warren president of the US economy? 

All signs point to Joe Biden, who between naps and licks of his ice cream cone has bestowed upon Warren de facto presidential powers to appoint people to key government posts that influence the nation’s economy.

I know this because bankers hire lobbyists to sniff out who is getting what jobs so they can plan their business accordingly. These lobbyists are telling the C-suite leaders that the man who was elected president is largely checked out on many issues including these appointments. (Surprise!)

Even worse, Biden has farmed out decisions like these to a coterie of progressive advisers (domestic-policy adviser Susan Rice apparently has a big say on stuff), who in turn take too many of their marching orders from Warren on who regulates the US economy.

That makes the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, in the words of one top Wall Street executive monitoring White House economic appointments, “president for financial regulation.”

What makes Warren so qualified for such power over the $22 trillion US economy is truly baffling. Of course she’s smart; her ascent began in academia and Harvard Law School. But we’re not talking Milton Friedman or even Larry Summers here. Warren’s academic research focused on bankruptcy and consumer issues, not how best to prime an economy to lift wages and produce jobs.

Yet the consumer stuff and her Harvard pedigree made Warren a go-to TV talking head to bank-bash during the 2008 financial crisis. Before long, she had the ear of President Barack Obama as he was weighing the post-crisis ­future of banking.

Her brainchild was a new, largely duplicative layer of government called the Consumer ­Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Warren had grand ambitions for the agency as a prosecutor of malice and greed in banking. Its record was far less impressive. The CFPB was credibly accused of conjuring fake scandals; running interference for trial lawyers looking to squeeze a quick buck out of targeted industries; and coming to the rescue of consumers only after scandals had been uncovered by the media (see the Wells Fargo fake-account mess).

President Joe Biden sleeping.
While President Joe Biden sleeps, progressives like Sen. Elizabeth Warren have been influencing the Democratic Party and the White House. REUTERS

Still, the media loved her. Over the years, Warren managed to leverage her fanatical outbursts to reporters to become a US senator, a presidential candidate and a darling of the progressive wing of the party, even if her halo has dimmed somewhat after falsely claiming she’s of Native American ancestry.

So important she is to the lefty-dominated Democratic Party that when Joe Biden is asleep (which is very often), she’s playing matchmaker on key White House regulatory appointments, Wall Street execs tell me. The Goldman banker and super-progressive SEC chair Gary Gensler is a Warren creation. Her fingerprints are all over the latest possible appointment of her old pal, Richard Cordray, formerly chief of the bank-hating CFPB during the Obama years, to a key role at the Fed as vice chair for banking regulation.

It doesn’t end there. Warren is said to be behind the White House nomination of Saule Omarova. This proud graduate of Moscow State University who never shed her Marxist past is remarkably Biden’s (I mean Warren’s) pick for comptroller of the currency, another key bank regulator.

Then there’s this Warren-inspired doozy: The nomination of Gigi Sohn as a commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission.

The FCC is one of the most important regulators of business since it provides oversight of our biggest industries: Telecom, media and tech. Sohn’s qualifications are that she is a legal academic and progressive activist who co-founded a left-wing organization that received funding from billionaire left-winger George Soros. She served as special counsel to Obama’s FCC chief Tom Wheeler when he famously pushed for “net neutrality” rules that undermined telecom innovation until it was ­reversed during the Trump years.

Sohn oddly gets some nods from conservatives for her plans to regulate evil Big Tech companies. Look deeper into Sohn’s record, and particularly at her tweets, and you find stuff that should make conservatives — or anyone who cherishes the First Amendment — want to vomit.

She has called into question whether the right-leaning Sinclair Broadcasting is qualified for an FCC broadcast license and if social media companies should moderate “misinformation and disinformation,” which many believe is code for censoring conservative speech.

Saule Omarova, President Biden's nominee to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
Saule Omarova, President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, advocates for the end of banking by moving Americans’ finances from private banks to the Federal Reserve. REUTERS/Tom Brenner

Sohn once bizarrely suggested that my employer, Fox News, is more “dangerous to our democracy” than the filth that fills social media. Sohn apparently doesn’t like the fact that Fox is one of the few alternatives to the likes of CNN and MSNBC. Word on Wall Street is that the White House will eventually flick in Sohn as chair of the FCC if she’s confirmed because that’s what Warren wants.

Some of these appointments will be shot down in Senate confirmation, but others won’t. The result: More costly regulation that will crush consumers and hinder innovation because it always does. Banks will have to spend time and money answering progressive calls to reduce their carbon footprint instead of ensuring the local bakery can get a loan to expand.

The Gigi Sohns in Washington will play politics with free speech. All thanks to President Warren.