Kashkari to the rescue: Ex-Goldman Sachs executive, rocket scientist to lead program
By Martin Crutsinger, The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 10/06/2008 09:43:31 PM PDT
WASHINGTON - Turns out rescuing the economy will take a rocket scientist.
That's what the man picked Monday to engineer the largest financial bailout in U.S. history did before shifting to the world of finance.
Neel Kashkari, who worked closely with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson at Goldman Sachs, followed him to the Treasury in July 2006 and has served as one of his key advisers - handling a number of tough assignments.
Kashkari, an Indian-American who was born in Ohio, is one more example of how Paulson has drawn on former executives at Goldman to staff Treasury. Paulson also leans heavily on former Goldman Sachs executives Dan Jester, a financial institutions banker, and Steve Shafran, who focused on corporate restructuring while at Goldman.
Officials said Paulson was particularly impressed with Kashkari's critical help in the creation of the HOPE Now program, an October 2007 Treasury initiative to cajole private mortgage companies into stemming a tidal wave of foreclosures by getting faltering borrowers into more affordable mortgages.
The program has been criticized for offering too little in terms of assistance, but the Bush administration points to it with pride as an example of a successful effort to harness private sector forces to deal with the steepest slump in housing in decades.
Kashkari, 35, has had a varied career since getting his bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering from the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Kashkari worked in research and development for TRW Inc., which is now part of defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp., developing technology for NASA space science missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope, the replacement program for the Hubble telescope.
Kashkari decided to switch from rockets to finance, returning to college where he got a master's degree in business administration from the Wharton School, the business school of the University of Pennsylvania. He then joined Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in San Francisco, where he headed up Goldman's information technology security investment banking practice.
At Treasury, Kashkari has been given a string of key tasks from helping to get Hope Now launched to helping draft the legislation that Congress passed last week creating the $700 billion rescue effort.
Scott Talbott, a lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable, a group of 100 large companies, said Kashkari will have his work cut out for him.
"He's got the health of the housing market and the economy on his shoulders," he said. "But he's got a $700 billion checkbook too." Kashkari will keep his current title as assistant Treasury secretary for international affairs, but will head up the newly created Office of Financial Stability on an interim basis.
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Just because this fart has a
Just because this fart has a B.S. in engineering, the jew media calls him a "rocket scientist." Another Goldman-Sachs phoney.
Kashkari (above left) is an
Kashkari (above left) is an Indian-American who has a few things in common with Paulson (above right). Both are former Goldman Sachs bankers, though Kashkari, at 35 years old, is much younger and was just a vice president-level banker in Goldman’s San Francisco technology banking effort when Paulson tapped him to join Treasury. Both also are Midwesterners. Kashkari grew up in Stow, Ohio, and earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Paulson was raised in Barrington Hills, Ill. And both sport similar hairstyles– or lack thereof.
Kashkari didn’t take a conventional route into banking. He started out as an aerospace engineer at TRW, developing technology for NASA projects like the James Webb Space Telescope, the replacement to Hubble, which is scheduled to launch in 2013.
He earned an M.B.A. at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. While there, one of his professors was Michael Useem, who liked to put students through grueling, Outward Bound-type strengths of endurance and strategy. Kashkari participated in one Army simulation in 2002 at Fort Dix, where he was quoted in this 2002 Philadelphia Inquirer article in a comment just as applicable to today’s financial crisis as the project he was working on: “We were all taught to play nice,” Kashkari said. “So who’s going to fight in the sandbox?”
After Wharton, Kashkari joined Goldman and worked in San Francisco, where he advised companies that create computer security programs like antivirus software. He and his wife, Minal, still keep a house in California.
Paulson likes to surround himself with people he’s comfortable with: people, mostly, from Goldman Sachs. Paulson’s inner circle already includes former Goldmanites Dan Jester, a financial institutions banker, and retired banker Steve Shafran, who focused on corporate restructuring at Goldman. It also included Robert Steel, who has since left Treasury to become CEO of Wachovia
http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2008/10/06/meet-neel-kashkari-the-man-with-the-700-bi...
Check out point 3- Since
Check out point 3-
Since joining the Treasury Department in July 2006, I have led several policy initiatives for the Department, including:
1. Promoting Indian financial sector liberalization and free trade through strengthened economic engagement and increased infrastructure investment;
2. Enhancing U.S. energy security by implementing policies that will, over time, reduce our exposure to the global oil market by encouraging the development of alternative fuels and by improving the efficiency of our auto fleet;
3. Spearheading our response to the housing crisis by mobilizing the private sector to avoid preventable foreclosures and working to ensure the flow of capital into the housing market, enabling the necessary housing correction to move forward as quickly as possible, and minimizing spillover from housing to the rest of the real economy.
Prior to joining Treasury, I was a Vice President at Goldman Sachs where I advised U.S. and international companies on both debt and equity financings and global mergers and acquisitions. As an advisor to management teams and boards of directors, I gained firsthand insight into the challenges that U.S. companies face as they strive to access markets abroad while also competing with global players here at home. This transactional experience will be particularly relevant to helping implement our critically important investment security policy through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). I will work hard to ensure that U.S. national security is protected, while encouraging foreign investment in the U.S.
Prior to joining the financial services industry, I strengthened my analytical skills...
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:kABQdIIzVowJ:www.ustreas.gov/press/releases...