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Neel Kashkari: Paulson's $700 billion man

by Tina Kells | October 6, 2008 at 02:05 pm | 1698 views | 2 comments | 4 recommendations

The U.S. Treasury will name Neel Kashkari, assistant secretary at the department, to head the new Office of Financial Stability and manage the administration of the $700 billion bailout plan. Neel Kashkari is a former VP at Goldman Sachs and has been one of Henry Paulson’s most trusted advisors on the U.S. housing crisis.

Kashkari joined the U.S. Treasury department in 2006 as a senior adviser to Henry Paulson. He was instrumental in the development of President Bush’s Twenty in Ten energy security plan with India, and played a key role in orchestrating earlier forms of government intervention in the subprime mortgage crisis. A detailed retrospective of Neel Kashkari’s career with the U.S. Treasury Department can be found on the federal government website.

More background about Neel Kashkari:

Kashkari will be designated the interim head of the new office of financial stability, created in the bailout legislation Congress passed last week. The Treasury aims to buy troubled assets such as home loans and mortgage-backed securities from banks and other financial institutions in an effort to shore up global credit markets.

Senate confirmation is required to fill the position for which Kashkari will be nominated. The Treasury hasn’t specified the length of Kashkari’s tenure, or whether the White House would nominate him officially. The Bush administration remains in office until January.

For now, Kashkari will play a lead role in setting up the new office and organizing its first operations. The Treasury has said it plans to hire about two dozen staff to manage the program, along with five to 10 asset management firms. The first asset-buying operations are not expected for at least four weeks.

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Amitjha

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 23:35 on October 6th, 2008

Tina Kells, I like this story. It's good stuff.

djermano

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 02:20 on October 7th, 2008

Tina Kells, I like this story. It's good stuff.

I find this announcement useless because the new administration will need to be doing the selection on who does what.... There is only a few months before January.....hardly enough time to print all that phoney cash.

Rev.