PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off for Thanksgiving this Thursday and Friday but back to our normal schedule on Monday, Nov. 29.

Last week’s contentious nomination hearing for Cornell Law Professor Saule Omarova left administration friends and foes alike wondering, “What is going on at the White House with financial nominations?”

It’s unclear whether Omarova, whom President Joe Biden has tapped to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, has enough support from Democrats to make it out of the Senate Banking Committee. This was not a surprise to administration officials, who had acknowledged privately for weeks that at least seven Democratic senators had concerns about her policy positions, which include an increasingly dominant role for the government in the financial industry.

Republicans are vehemently opposed to Omarova’s nomination, with some pointing to her background growing up in the then-Soviet state of Kazakhstan and her education at Moscow State University to insinuate she has communist leanings. The battle became so ugly in recent weeks that the White House took the rare step of coordinating interviews for Omarova to defend herself.

“If you were going to pick this fight, you needed to be better organized and come out swinging,” said Jesse Van Tol, president and CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, which supports Omarova’s nomination. “And they didn’t.”

A White House official said the administration strongly supports the historic nomination, pointing to Omarova’s track record on regulation and strong academic credentials. “Last week’s hearing showed what we already knew: Saule Omarova is eminently qualified for this position, and GOP attacks on her fall flat in the face of the facts,” the official said.

People who follow the process closely say it’s the latest misstep in the administration’s clumsy effort to fill the government’s most important financial policy jobs.

The White House initially planned to nominate Obama Treasury official Michael Barr as comptroller but abandoned that plan in the face of criticism from progressives. The president instead appointed an acting comptroller, Michael Hsu, a former Federal Reserve bank supervisor who appears set to remain in the job for the time being.

In February, Biden nominated Rohit Chopra to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But Chopra sat in limbo in the Senate for more than six months waiting for the White House to line up his replacement at the Federal Trade Commission, ensuring his departure would not result in a 2-2 split among the panel’s Democrats and Republicans.

Seats on the FDIC and Fed boards have remained vacant since the start of the administration. And at the Treasury, there is still no nominee to be under secretary for international affairs, a role seen as the government’s top financial diplomat.

To be sure, the White House has had some success: The Senate confirmed Gary Gensler as SEC chair in April and Lina Khan as FTC chair in June. Chopra assumed office in October.

But the snafus and delays have baffled industry sources, lobbyists and advocacy groups.

The president is expected to name his pick to lead the Federal Reserve this week, though as recently as Friday, he was still mulling whether to reappoint Chair Jerome Powell or replace him with Governor Lael Brainard. (The White House said Biden will deliver remarks Tuesday on the economy and rising inflation, before leaving for Nantucket for Thanksgiving.)

From our colleague Jonathan Lemire: “The process has resembled a tortured morass of indecision. Forever the senator, Biden has engaged in an extended debate, soliciting opinions and facts far and wide as he looks to fill a vital post at a time of deep economic uncertainty and political peril.”

Biden will also need to name a new vice chair for supervision and regulation and, in short order, a vice chair overseeing monetary policy. If Powell or Brainard decide to leave, depending on the decision, that could give Biden another vacancy to fill. It’s not clear how close the president is to lining up the other picks or when they may be announced.

“Administrations get to put their stamp on these agencies with who they select to lead them,” said Aaron Klein, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “The failure to put someone in place means that you’re not going to accomplish your agenda.”

IT’S MONDAY — It’s a short week for the Thanksgiving holiday, but we’ll be with you through Wednesday. Please send us those tips, suggestions and other feedback at [email protected], [email protected], or on Twitter @katedavidson.

Congress is in recess this week … American University’s Washington College of Law holds a virtual discussion titled “Follow the Money: Current Issues in Crypto and Ransomware” on Tuesday … Commerce Department releases data Wednesday on third-quarter GDP, and October consumer spending, personal income, inflation, durable goods orders and new home sales … Fed releases minutes from its Nov. 2-3 policy meeting on Wednesday.

HEDGE FUND BILLIONAIRE BEATS OUT CRYPTO GROUP FOR CONSTITUTION — Our Zachary Warmbrodt: “Hedge fund billionaire and GOP megadonor Ken Griffin secured a copy of the U.S. Constitution [last] week with a $43.2 million auction bid that beat out thousands of crypto users who banded together to acquire the extremely rare first-run printing. The Citadel CEO, who is also an art collector, plans to loan the document to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark., a free museum founded by philanthropist and Walmart heiress Alice Walton.”

NEW GOP WEED APPROACH: MOVE FEDS, GET OUT THE WAY — Our colleagues Natalie Fertig and Mona Zhang: “Republicans are warming to weed. Nearly half of Republican voters support federally decriminalizing cannabis, and GOP lawmakers are now beginning to reflect their constituents’ view by increasingly supporting broad legalization at the state and federal level.”

ICYMI: JOE BIDEN’S EMPTY INFLATION TOOLBOX — Presidents have almost no power to ease the pain of inflation, but the voting public cuts them no slack, Jeff Greenfield writes in POLITICO Magazine: “Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson were fans of ‘jawboning’ — using their influence to persuade unions and companies to hold down wage and price increases.

"But those were days when large, powerful unions — the auto workers, steel workers, Teamsters — and large, powerful corporations like General Motors or US Steel could significantly affect the larger economy with their decisions. Who would Joe Biden ‘jawbone’ now? The thousands of potential truck drivers whose absence from the road is helping to drive up costs? Asian factories where a microchip shortage has driven up the cost of new cars, which in turn has driven up the cost of used cars? The OPEC+ cartel, which has no interest in increasing oil production and may indeed be looking forward to $100 a barrel costs?”

BIDEN NEARS END GAME ON FED CHAIR DECISION — WSJ’s Nick Timiraos and Andrew Restuccia: “Mr. Biden has signaled he is looking for continuity in Fed policy because he is considering whether to reappoint Mr. Powell for a second four-year term or elevate governor Lael Brainard, who has strongly backed the central bank’s interest rate policy over the past four years. Instead, the president’s choice may turn on politics rather than economics, because Mr. Powell’s candidacy has divided progressive Democrats and led to competing views inside the Biden administration.”

But whoever he picks will struggle to align hikes with hiring goal — Bloomberg’s Craig Torres: “Regardless of whether it’s Jerome Powell or Lael Brainard running the Federal Reserve in February, the central bank risks finding itself in a bind of its own making. The quickest consumer inflation since 1990 and the strongest price expectations among households in eight years are eroding the confidence of policy makers that inflation will cool in coming months as they once assumed. That may force them to pivot faster toward tighter monetary policy as soon as December, potentially by signaling a faster tapering of bond purchases and by updating forecasts to updating forecasts to signal a more aggressive interest-rate hiking cycle than previously anticipated.”

MIT finance professor Haoxiang Zhu will lead the SEC’s Trading and Markets division beginning next month, the agency said Friday. Zhu, who previously served as an academic expert for the CFTC and the Bank for International Settlements, will take the helm of the office on Dec. 10.

PRIVATE EQUITY ON TRACK TO INVEST $1 TRILLION IN 2021 — Private equity has invested $788 billion in more than 4,800 U.S. businesses through the third quarter, 84 percent of which has gone to businesses with fewer than 500 workers, according to a new report from the American Investment Council. That’s an 86 percent investment increase from the same period in 2020.

MANCHINEMA WATCH — NYT’s Ken Vogel and Kate Kelly highlight how Republican donors have taken a shine to Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) in “a striking display of how party affiliation can prove secondary to special interests and ideological motivations when the stakes are high enough. (h/t our friends at Playbook)

“Ms. Sinema is winning more financial backing from Wall Street and constituencies on the right in large part for her opposition to raising personal and corporate income tax rates. Mr. Manchin has attracted new Republican-leaning donors as he has fought against much of his own party to scale back the size of Mr. Biden’s legislation and limit new social welfare components.”

CORPORATE AMERICA UNLOADS ON BIDEN’S NEWLY ACTIVE BUSINESS WATCHDOGS — Reuters: “Corporate America mounted fresh attacks on Friday on President Joe Biden's antitrust enforcers who have vowed to rein in anticompetitive practices and vigorously investigate corporate crime. The Chamber of Commerce wrote three letters and filed more than 30 Freedom of Information Act requests about what it said were Federal Trade Commission failures to strictly follow rules and giving in to political interference. The FTC defended itself, saying it would not change course despite criticism from the big business lobby group about a series of actions spearheaded by FTC Chair Lina Khan.”

SECOND WINTER OF WOE THREATENS GLOBAL ECONOMY — Bloomberg’s Craig Stirling: “The world economy is approaching the Northern Hemisphere winter in disarray, unable to shake off the coronavirus crisis amid persisting supply disruptions, soaring prices and resurgent outbreaks. Global surveys of purchasing managers this week are likely to point that way. Among the outcomes anticipated by economists are slowing manufacturing and services activity throughout the euro zone and the U.K., and only modest improvement in the U.S.”

—Also: Global supply-chain woes are beginning to recede, but shipping, manufacturing and retail executives say that they don’t expect a return to more-normal operations until next year and that cargo will continue to be delayed if Covid-19 outbreaks disrupt key distribution hubs, WSJ’s Stella Yifan Xie, Jon Emont and Alistair MacDonald report.