<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>Oct 12, 2008
SAVIOUR #2
</TR><!-- headline one : start --><TR>Brainy son of Kashmiri immigrants is the US$700b man
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The engineering experience of Mr Neel Kashkari, who used to design Nasa satellites, is seen as a plus given by the complexity of the world economic system. -- PHOTO: AP
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->Washington - Many complicated securities at the centre of the sub-prime mortgage crisis were designed by mathematicians and physicists, and now the US government has tapped an aerospace engineer to start unravelling them.
He is Mr Neel Kashkari, who used to design Nasa satellites and is a product of a Midwestern family that thrives on complicated subjects.
His father was an engineering professor and his mother, a pathologist. His sister works with infectious diseases. And now Mr Kashkari, who abandoned satellites for Wall Street and then a government job, is engineering the US$700 billion (S$1 trillion) bailout of the nation's banking system.
'As an engineer, I loved tackling problems that had never been thought about before,' said MrKashkari, appointed last week as the Treasury Department's point man to launch a programme for buying troubled housing assets. 'Although we have had credit crises in the past, this one is very different, and so it brings me back in the way we have to creatively tackle it.'
Mr Kashkari, now known as the $700-billion man, is just 35 and a two-year veteran at the Treasury. He is helping to steer the nation through an economic crisis after originally thinking he would spend his life building gizmos.
People who have worked with him view his engineering experience as a plus in these times when the world economic system has grown complicated. 'I can assure you he will understand all these complex securities,' said Mr Al Hubbard, US President George W. Bush's former National Economic Council director. 'There's nobody any smarter than he is.'
=> Dangerous thinking!
The son of Kashmiri immigrants, Mr Kashkari earned his master's degree in engineering from the University of Illinois, but was not keen to get a PhD and settle for a lifetime of research and development.
So he earned his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and landed an investment banking job with Goldman Sachs. His interest in policy and politics lingered, so he talked to Mr Henry Paulson, then Sachs' chief executive.
Mr Paulson encouraged him to pursue government work if the right opportunity arose. A few months later, when Mr Paulson was named Treasury Secretary, MrKashkari got in touch with him.
'If you are putting together a team, I want to come with you,' he told Mr Paulson. They started work on the same day.
He became the Treasury's point man when the housing crisis began to unfold last year, working on the formation of a partnership among mortgage lenders, credit counsellors and investors to help at-risk home owners.
Since then, he has played a role in almost every facet of the Treasury's response to the sub-prime mortgage and credit crises, including working to negotiate the bailout deal with Congress.
News of the bailout plan has done little to calm investors or free up credit. But that is partly because Mr Kashkari is just getting to work figuring out which troubled assets to purchase and whom to hire to oversee the investments.
'He was modest about his role and what he's working on,' said Mrs Helen Gregory, director of advancement for Western Reserve Academy, whose son was MrKashkari's classmate.
But at the same time, Mrs Gregory, who met Mr Kashkari over coffee recently, said: 'I felt this weight of the world on his shoulders.' Los Angeles Times-Washington Post
SAVIOUR #2
</TR><!-- headline one : start --><TR>Brainy son of Kashmiri immigrants is the US$700b man
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><!-- show image if available --><TR vAlign=bottom><TD width=330>
</TD><TD width=10>
The engineering experience of Mr Neel Kashkari, who used to design Nasa satellites, is seen as a plus given by the complexity of the world economic system. -- PHOTO: AP
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->Washington - Many complicated securities at the centre of the sub-prime mortgage crisis were designed by mathematicians and physicists, and now the US government has tapped an aerospace engineer to start unravelling them.
He is Mr Neel Kashkari, who used to design Nasa satellites and is a product of a Midwestern family that thrives on complicated subjects.
His father was an engineering professor and his mother, a pathologist. His sister works with infectious diseases. And now Mr Kashkari, who abandoned satellites for Wall Street and then a government job, is engineering the US$700 billion (S$1 trillion) bailout of the nation's banking system.
'As an engineer, I loved tackling problems that had never been thought about before,' said MrKashkari, appointed last week as the Treasury Department's point man to launch a programme for buying troubled housing assets. 'Although we have had credit crises in the past, this one is very different, and so it brings me back in the way we have to creatively tackle it.'
Mr Kashkari, now known as the $700-billion man, is just 35 and a two-year veteran at the Treasury. He is helping to steer the nation through an economic crisis after originally thinking he would spend his life building gizmos.
People who have worked with him view his engineering experience as a plus in these times when the world economic system has grown complicated. 'I can assure you he will understand all these complex securities,' said Mr Al Hubbard, US President George W. Bush's former National Economic Council director. 'There's nobody any smarter than he is.'
=> Dangerous thinking!
The son of Kashmiri immigrants, Mr Kashkari earned his master's degree in engineering from the University of Illinois, but was not keen to get a PhD and settle for a lifetime of research and development.
So he earned his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and landed an investment banking job with Goldman Sachs. His interest in policy and politics lingered, so he talked to Mr Henry Paulson, then Sachs' chief executive.
Mr Paulson encouraged him to pursue government work if the right opportunity arose. A few months later, when Mr Paulson was named Treasury Secretary, MrKashkari got in touch with him.
'If you are putting together a team, I want to come with you,' he told Mr Paulson. They started work on the same day.
He became the Treasury's point man when the housing crisis began to unfold last year, working on the formation of a partnership among mortgage lenders, credit counsellors and investors to help at-risk home owners.
Since then, he has played a role in almost every facet of the Treasury's response to the sub-prime mortgage and credit crises, including working to negotiate the bailout deal with Congress.
News of the bailout plan has done little to calm investors or free up credit. But that is partly because Mr Kashkari is just getting to work figuring out which troubled assets to purchase and whom to hire to oversee the investments.
'He was modest about his role and what he's working on,' said Mrs Helen Gregory, director of advancement for Western Reserve Academy, whose son was MrKashkari's classmate.
But at the same time, Mrs Gregory, who met Mr Kashkari over coffee recently, said: 'I felt this weight of the world on his shoulders.' Los Angeles Times-Washington Post
