Reinventing the Neel

As you probably heard by now, Neel Kashkari was named president of the Minneapolis Fed.
Ordinarily, when a regional Federal Reserve bank gets a new president, it is not national news. Patrick Harker at the Philly Fed – crickets.
But Neel Kashkari is something of a celebrity. Most recently, he ran for governor of California. He had some good ideas that didn’t involve raising state income taxes to exorbitant levels. He even beat incumbent Governor Jerry Brown so badly at their only debate that Brown refused to participate in any more debates.
But in the end, it was hard for Kashkari to shed the Republican stigma in California – even as a pro-choice, pro-marriage-equality Republican. He lost, but not ignominiously. Nobody expected a Republican to win in California.
Before that, Kashkari ran equities at PIMCO (a big deal), but most people remember him for being the administrator of TARP, otherwise known as the Troubled Assets Relief Program, otherwise known as ‘The Bank Bailouts,’ conducted under Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson in 2008-2009.
Before that, Kashkari worked at Goldman Sachs.
Pretty good resume for a guy who is 42. I am 41, and I’ve done some cool stuff, but not that cool.
Outside of the resume bullet points, who, exactly, is Neel Kashkari?

This post was published at Mauldin Economics on NOVEMBER 12, 2015.