Kashkari began his career in finance at Goldman Sachs, then joined the U.S. Treasury, where he eventually ran the massive bank bailout program enacted in the depths of the 2008 financial crisis.
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In 2014, he ran as a Republican for governor of California, losing to Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown.
Kashkari comes to the Fed as Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have lambasted the Fed for having a revolving door between the central bank and Wall Street.
As it became apparent that Fed policy held vast sway over the economic fortunes of the country, presidents and regional Fed boards increasingly turned to Ph.D. economists to guide the central bank and to be effective participants during the debates of the policy-making Federal Open Market Committee. Most recently he was managing director and member of the executive office at PIMCO. As a longstanding defender of the class interests of the high finance elite, and as an unreconstructed adherent of the ideology that created our new gilded age, Kashkari is the ideal person to be given an unelected position with authority over the nation’s monetary policy. As for Kashkari, he was never a Goldman heavyweight, just one of thousands of vice presidents, working on mergers in the technology sector.
Kashkari is the fourth sitting Fed president to have ties to Goldman: William Dudley is head of the NY Fed. He’s an alumni of investment bank Goldman Sachs and investment fund Pacific Investment Management Co., or Pimco.
Liberal activist groups, led by the Center for Popular Democracy, have pushed for diversity in the appointment of new Fed officials, pressing for representatives of workers and consumers or labor and community leaders. He will oversee 1,100 employees in Minneapolis and Helena, Mont., who conduct economic research, supervise financial institutions and provide payments services to commercial banks and the US government, along with other supporting activities, a November 10 press release from the bank said. On September 8, he replaced Richard Fisher, who retired in March. Previously, he was an aerospace engineer at TRW Corp.
Mr. Kashkari takes office at a time of transition at the regional Fed banks, after new presidents took office in Dallas and Philadelphia this year. He also earned an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
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“The Minneapolis Fed has a history” over recent decades of being “one of the more-academic Feds”, Mr. Hanson said.
