The $700 billion man

Washington Post ^ | December 6, 2009 | Laura Blumenfeld

[Lorianne]

"It's like a dream," Kashkari says, his work boots crunching pine cones. "Sometimes I think: Was it real?"

It all began as it ended, abruptly. Kashkari was a 35-year-old business school graduate from a suburb of Akron, Ohio, who had gone to Washington in 2006 to learn how government worked. Then came the recession, and through a freakish set of circumstances, mixing pluck, cataclysm and luck, he was appointed by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson as the federal bailout chief.

Suddenly, he was in charge of $700 billion.

Congress savaged him. Wall Street Journal editorials doubted him. His home-town buddies urged him to use the money to buy the Cleveland Browns and fire the coaches. His wife spoke to him so rarely, she described them as "dead to each other." He lost sleep, gained weight and saw a close adviser, Don Hammond, suffer a heart attack at his Treasury desk. On May 1, after serving seven months under Presidents Bush and Obama, he resigned.

Within a week, Kashkari and his wife put their belongings into "indefinite storage." They moved to a cabin near the Truckee River in Northern California. "Off the map," he told his friends. He threw away his business cards, and made a list of the things he wanted to do:

1. build shed

2. chop wood

3. lose 20 pounds

4. help with Hank's book

He called his four-step program "Washington detox."

[raj bhatia]

I read this yesterday and thought the guy came out as genuine. Pretty good read.

[NVDave]

I come away from this piece thinking “Sucker.”

A bunch of career bureaucrats who obviously didn’t know how Wall Street works got suckered in by a bunch of thieves, financial perverts and hucksters.

The response of the Treasury should have been to extract something out of Wall Street. As in: “OK, you want a backstop. That’s fine, we’ll backstop youse guys. But there’s some things we want as well, right? No quid, no quo, capisci?”

And then Treasury should have demanded some things out of Wall Street that lessened the risk going forward, without having to wait for Congress to get their heads out of their posteriors.

[RobRoy]

>>I come away from this piece thinking “Sucker.”<<

I come away thinking I can’t wait to get to my farm in Kentucky next spring.

[kenavi]

Thanks for posting this.

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

I remember when he was appointed. My thought at the time was “Peter principle squared”, i.e. someone appointed because they were obviously incompetent. This guy was never meant to solve any problems and the only one on the inside who didn’t know it was him.

[Iron Munro]

No comment herein about the lies that Paulson told to President Bush, to Congress and to the American people.

Remember, he said they needed $700 Billon IMMEDIATELY, IF NOT SOONER to buy “Troubled Assets.”

But they didn’t buy any and it wasn’t long before Paulson admitted he lied and never intended to use the TARP money for the stated purpose.

So, what did “nice guy” Kashkari know about the lies Paulson told and when did he know it?

After all, he was the impelmenter, the CZAR - wasn’t he concerned that he was managing the biggest hoax ever pulled on America? Wasn’t he concerned that he was doing the bidding of a lier and scam artist? Was he at all concerned that they were raiding the treasury, while strengthening Goldman Sachs and putting their competition out of business with taxpayer money?

Apparantly not, because here he is, helping Paulson edit his book - and is there any doubt who the hero of the story will be when the book hits the stores?

These people all belong in prison.

[Lorianne]

Agreed

[org.whodat]

These people all belong in prison.

Please can we not feed them to the:

[pankot]

It worked in France!

[FreeStateYank]

Good piece. Kudos to Neel for his hard work and decency. Glad he’s getting it back together.

What saddens me is the culture of DC. It takes idealistic, hard-working individuals and sucks the life from them.