Neel Kashkari – Do We Finally Have a Good Candidate for Governor?

Neel Kashkari is an experienced, pragmatic leader who has successfully worked with Republicans and Democrats to tackle the most serious economic challenges America has faced in nearly a century.

Kashkari is best known for spearheading the country’s response to the 2008 financial crisis, but his interest in public policy and finding solutions to complex challenges began early in life.

A first-generation American, Neel grew up in a middle-class household where he witnessed firsthand how a good education can empower people and open the doors of opportunity. His parents emigrated from India to the United States some 50 years ago. Neel’s father taught engineering at a local college and dedicated his research to eradicating poverty in villages in India and Africa, earning the Presidential End Hunger Award from President George H.W. Bush. Neel’s mother worked at a community hospital treating patients battling cancer. While growing up outside the blue-collar city of Akron, Ohio, Neel bagged groceries, mowed lawns, and worked as an assistant at a local auto garage to earn extra money.

An early interest in math and science led Neel to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering at the University of Illinois, where he led an 80-person student team to build a solar-powered car to compete in the 1,100-mile Sunrayce challenge. After graduating, Neel moved to California in 1998 and worked as a design engineer at TRW in Redondo Beach, developing technology for NASA space missions.

He wanted to learn about entrepreneurship and job creation, so he went back to school and earned an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating in 2002, Neel returned to California to help Silicon Valley entrepreneurs raise capital to grow their companies and create jobs.

Kashkari’s interest in public policy and service took him to Washington, D.C. in 2006, when President George W. Bush appointed him to the Department of the Treasury. His initial work brought together experts from across the government and private sectors to craft policies to encourage alternative energy sources that would enhance both national security and environmental sustainability. When the housing downturn started, Neel led the Department’s work with non-profit organizations, congressional leaders, and financial institutions to help distressed homeowners avoid preventable foreclosures.

Kashkari was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in 2008. As the financial crisis erupted, Neel negotiated with congressional leaders of both parties to write and pass landmark legislation to prevent a widespread economic collapse. The program he implemented not only has recouped all the money spent, but also has made a $13 billion profit for taxpayers to date. For his leadership, Neel received the Alexander Hamilton Award, the Department’s highest honor.

Following his work in Washington, Neel returned to California in 2009 to work for PIMCO, a company that helps teachers, firefighters, and other public employees save for their retirement. He left the firm in January 2013 to explore returning to public service. Since then, he has been traveling the state meeting with Californians to learn about the challenges facing families, communities and small businesses to determine how he can help give others the same opportunities America has given his family.

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5 Responses to Neel Kashkari – Do We Finally Have a Good Candidate for Governor?

  1. Libby says:

    Just a quick google, you understand, but as of 4/24, he was trailing a registered sex offender in the polls.

    “Kashkari was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in 2008. As the financial crisis erupted, Neel negotiated with congressional leaders of both parties to write and pass landmark legislation to prevent a widespread economic collapse.”

    But I thought you all were dead against the bank bailout. You don’t know what you want, do you?

  2. Tina says:

    Libby read on…The program he implemented not only has recouped all the money spent, but also has made a $13 billion profit for taxpayers to date. This was no bail out. That implies money thrown down a rat hole…spent…gone. He designed it so that the investment could be recouped and it was, with interest. We know what we want and it isn’t what we got as 2009 dawned.

    Obama’s record of management, recovery and growth at the end of the recession that summer has not been as successful. A fair evaluation in The Economist provides some incite:

    Mr Obama’s personal priorities carried the day. The stimulus allocated some $90 billion to green projects, including $8 billion for high-speed rail. Some of this has clearly been wasted, but perhaps not as much as critics think. Less than 2% of the Department of Energy’s controversial green-energy loans, such as those to Solyndra, a now-bankrupt solar-panel maker, have gone bad.

    The bigger problem with this spending is that it went against the economic tides. Last year Mr Obama boasted that America would soon have 40% of the world’s manufacturing capacity in advanced electric-car batteries. But with electric cars still a rounding error in total car sales, that capacity is unneeded. Many battery makers are struggling to survive. Makers of solar panels face cheap competition from China, while natural gas from shale rock has undermined the case for electricity from solar and wind. As for high-speed rail, extensive highways, cheap air fares and stroppy state and local governments make its viability dubious. A $3.5 billion federal grant to California may come to nothing as the estimated cost of that state’s high-speed rail project runs out of control.

    Mr Obama has always portrayed himself as a pragmatist, not an ideologue. “The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works,” he said in his inaugural address. In practice, though, he usually chooses bigger government over small.

    People who are free of overbearing governmental management, interference, and restrictive regulation are creative. Their investments in their own futures, their personal ambitions and motivations begin to create a dynamic weave of activity. The people choose what rises or falls by their enthusiasm and willingness to buy. The economic tides are more easily navigated by each business than by a far off uninvolved DC leader. A single leader or even he and his advisers cannot possibly come close to the natural dynamism of ordinary people looking out for the interests of themselves, their families, their businesses, and their employees.

    We needed a little support to get the nation moving but we didn’t need some guy in far off place trying to direct forces and picking winners and losers.

    We want America to work. We want all Americans to have opportunity. We revere freedom! We believe in the model our founders designed because it is the best model ever conceived to protect the rights and freedoms of all of the people.

  3. Tina says:

    He certainly sounds like a good man, Jack.

  4. bill says:

    Regardless of how good Kashncarry is it makes no nevermind.

    Brownie is sitting on a mountain of campaign money and somehow his poll ratings are amazingly at record highs.

    Brownie wins in a landslide. Heck, he could prolly be governor for life if there weren’t term limits and he will live forever.

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