The Man With the $700 Billion Wallet

[Mrs. Sharon B. Hodge]

October 06, 2008 - Neel Kashkari, a former Goldman Sachs executive has been named interim head of the government's $700 billion rescue effort for financial institutions

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Meet Neel Kashkari: The Man With the $700 Billion Wallet
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Wall Street Journal
October 6, 2008

http://blogs. wsj. com/deals/2008/10/06/meet-neel-kashkari-the-man-...

A Goldman Sachs Group alumnus in charge of the nation’s economic rescue? How unusual

Except, of course, it isn’t. As The Wall Street Journal’s Deborah Solomon reported today, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is promoting Neel Kashkari, the Treasury’s assistant secretary for international affairs, to be the point man overseeing the $700 billion financial bailout as the interim head of Paulson’s Office of Financial Stability.
The full appointment would need Senate confirmation, which is unlikely to come given the short remaining tenure in this Administration

The move essentially puts a new title on what Kashkari he has been doing since he joined Treasury in 2006–examining the consequences of an economic housing fallout. Kashkari was one of three Treasury staffers–including general counsel Robert Hoyt and head of legislative affairs Kevin Fromer–who stayed up until 4 a.m.
last Sunday putting together the $700 billion bailout bill that was shot down by House Republicans the next day

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

Kashkari’s appointment is another example of how deep those Goldman Sachs ties go. In fact, Paulson himself was recruited by a former Goldman Sachs banker: former White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten. Bolten overcame Paulson’s reluctance to persuade him to take the job as Treasury Secretary at a time when Paulson was so wary of the job that he declined to meet with President Bush because he knew he couldn’t say no to the President himself. According to an article in The International Economy by Fred Barnes in 2006, Paulson also believed that the Bush administration would not be able to accomplish many financial changes in 2007 and 2008.
Kashkari’s new job show just how wrong Paulson was back then


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Indian Amercian gets plum post in US govt
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Rediff News
Aziz Haniffa in Washington,DC
July 18, 2008 09:06 IST

http://www. rediff. com/money/2008/jul/18us. htm

Neel Kashkari, who was the Senior Advisor to US Treasury Secretary Henry M Paulson, was nominated by President Bush to the post of Assistant Secretary of Treasury for International Affairs and has been confirmed by the US Senate

He will be one of the senior most Indian Americans in the Bush Administration.
His tenure will last for six months
The Akron, Ohio-born Kashkari, told rediff. com that in the next few months he would zero in "on a number of initiatives critical to ensuring US and global economic strength," and that his responsibilities would "include managing issues related to foreign investment in the United States, as well as overseeing regionally-focused international affairs priorities"

"I look forward to reaffirming America's commitment to open investment - which stimulates growth, creates jobs, enhances productivity and improves competitiveness," he said

Kashkari said, Specifically related to India, there were five areas which he would push for "that the Treasury Department sees as significant opportunities for both countries - promoting infrastructure investment, increasing financial sector liberalisation, supporting a bilateral investment framework, investing in clean technology, and supporting multilateral trade"

Sources told rediff. com, that in the discussions between senior US and Indian officials that have been underway on the possibility of negotiating a bilateral investment treaty between the two countries, Kashkari had been among the leading American negotiators

However, these sources acknowledged that the chances of such a treaty "getting past first phase, let along being signed in the final months of this Administration is highly unlikely - it just won't happen"

"But at least the spadework is being done and the seeds have been planted and the template would have been put in place, if the new administration wants to run with it," the source added

Kashkari - whose parents, father Chaman, a retired professor of engineering and mother, Sheila, a pathologist, hail from Kashmir- prior to joining Treasury, was a vice president at Goldman Sachs and Co.
in San Francisco, where he led the firm's IT security investment banking practice, advising public and private companies on mergers and acquisitions and financial transactions

Before his career in finance, Kashkari was a R&D Principal Investigator at TRW in Redondo Beach, California, where he developed technology for NASA space science missions such as James Webb Space Telescope, the replacement for Hubble, which is scheduled for launch in 2013

He is an alumnus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, from where he received his bachelor's and master's degree in aerospace engineering, and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business from where he received his MBA in finance

When he appeared before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, chaired by Senator Chris Dodd, Connecticut Democrat, for his confirmation hearing, Kashkari said that since joining the Treasury Department in July 2006, he had led several policy initiatives for the Department, including "promoting Indian financial sector liberalisation and free trade through strengthened economic engagement and increased infrastructure investment"

He said that in his role as Senior Advisor to Paulson, he had "been responsible for developing and executing international and domestic policies for the Department to foster a more conducive investment climate for the US as well as the support of global economic growth"

Kashkari said that his stint in the private sector as an investment banker before joining government where he had "executed financial and strategic transactions," had prepared him for the position to which he had been nominated by President Bush

He said advising US and international companies "on both debt and equity financing, global mergers and acquisitions," and by virtue of coaching management teams and boards of directors, "I gained first-hand insight into the challenges that US 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 security policy through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States," he added, and pledged to "work hard to ensure that US national security is protected, while encouraging foreign investment in the US"

Kashkari said that besides leading several policy initiatives for the Department, including the India initiative, he had also been involved in "enhancing US 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"

[James and Terry Hamilton]

Interesting turn of events...This whole scene has been