Neel Tushar Kashkari is an American banker, economist and politician who is the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. As interim Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability from October 2008 to May 2009, he oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) that was a major component of the U.S. government's response to the Financial crisis of 2007–2008. A Republican, he unsuccessfully ran for Governor of California in the 2014 election.
Born and raised in Ohio, and educated at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Kashkari worked initially as an aerospace engineer. After attending business school at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, he became an investment banker, covering the information technology security sector for Goldman Sachs.
Henry Paulson, the former head of Goldman, and then Secretary of the Treasury, hired Kashkari on as an aide. Kashkari was eventually named Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Economics and Development. At Treasury, he played a number of roles in the response to the financial crisis and the subprime mortgage crisis that preceded it, most notably administering the TARP.
Kashkari left government and began working for Pimco in 2009, leading that company's push into the equities market. He resigned from Pimco in January 2013 to explore a run for public office. One year later, he announced his candidacy for Governor of California. He came in second in California's nonpartisan blanket primary but lost the general election to incumbent governor Jerry Brown.
He was named the new president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve November 10, 2015, succeeding Narayana Kocherlakota who announced his resignation in June.
