Meet your new Minneapolis Fed President, Kashikari

On Tuesday, the Minneapolis Fed named Neel Kashkari as its new president.

Obama vetoed the bill October 22 in a dispute over Pentagon funding that was resolved by a budget deal.

Kashkari received mixed reviews from his six-month stint as the first administrator of TARP, the controversial program that ended up turning a modest profit for the federal government. To manage TARP, “the fact that I had went to Wharton and got my MBA and worked at Goldman are all fine, but I really relied on my engineering skills as a research engineer working on NASA missions”, Kashkari told The Wall Street Journal, employing the rarely used “people criticize me for being a banker, but really I’m a rocket scientist” tactic of feigning modesty.

Fair or not, the bank does seem to have a hold at the Federal Reserve.

They join Bill Dudley, president of the NY Fed, as members of the Federal Open Market Committee, which votes on interest rates.

He is the third Fed regional bank president appointed this year who once worked as a Goldman Sachs executive.

He will be replacing the top “dove” on the monetary policy committee. Kocherlakota changed from favoring higher interest rates to fight inflation to advocating for maintaining low interest rates to stimulate the economy. During the height of the financial crisis in 2009, he was tapped by then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to oversee the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the $700 billion bailout program created by Congress. Before joining the Treasury Department, Kashkari was a vice president at Goldman Sachs in San Francisco.

The CNBC debate was marked by several moments where the candidates on stage struck back at the moderators.

For Kashkari, the Minneapolis Fed job marks a return to public service.

After leaving the Treasury in 2009, Kashkari took a job at the investment firm Pimco. He came in second in California’s nonpartisan blanket primary, but lost the general election to incumbent governor Jerry Brown.