You can tell a lot about a nominee by her friends and enemies. It says something about Sarah Bloom Raskin, President Joe Biden’s nominee to be the top bank regulator, that the bankers embrace her.
It says something else that her main opposition comes from industries the Federal Reserve should not be affecting directly.
These facts suggest Raskin’s priority will not be to keep banks in line but rather to expand the Fed into social justice territory and go after enemies of the Biden regime.
The oil industry usually doesn’t wade into Fed issues, so it is quite odd to see it oppose Raskin so vociferously. The reason is that she has urged the Federal Reserve to discriminate against oil, gas, and coal because Fed investments in oil and gas companies “undermines urgent efforts to counter surging carbon dioxide and methane emissions.”
“By contrast,” the New York Times reports, “the banking industry has taken a more benign view of Ms. Raskin. The Financial Services Forum, which represents the chief executive officers of the largest banks, congratulated Ms. Raskin and the other White House Fed picks in a statement after their nominations were announced, as did the American Bankers Association.”
That ought to set off alarm bells. When all the incumbents in an industry are fine with a regulator, it suggests she might not be so good for customers or future competitors.
Let’s examine for a minute what Raskin means when she calls fossil fuels “a terrible investment.” Mostly, it means she expects the federal government to target the fossil fuel industry. That is, when she says the future is dim for oil and gas, that’s not a prediction — it’s a threat.
Raskin believes bank regulators should pressure banks to make life miserable for oil companies. Also, she’s the wife of congressman Jamie Raskin, who has the power to make and vote for laws that subsidize the competitors of oil and technology that uses oil. His party has openly set a goal of taxing and regulating the fossil fuel industries into oblivion.
There is no outside force — the climate, the economy, geopolitics, technology — that makes oil “a bad investment.” It’s the Raskins and their ideological kin who have the power to make it a bad investment through banking regulation and energy and environment legislation.
