At this time last year, Neel Kashkari was head of the federal government’s Office of Financial Stability, responsible for distributing $700 billion in federal bailout money to banks. Today, says Laura Blumenfeld in The Washington Post, he lives in a remote cabin in Northern California, recovering from a job that left him a physical and emotional wreck. “I felt like I got jumped,” he says. “Like three guys beat the crap out of me. Sometimes I think, Was it real?” When the 35-year-old Goldman Sachs whiz kid was named to head up the bailout program in October 2008, congressional leaders savaged him as too young, too inexperienced, and too cozy with Wall Street. “I wasn’t prepared for their hostility. Members of Congress will tell you they agree with you, and then in public they blast you.” In the new job, Kashkari faced a financial meltdown of epic proportions. “We had to project confidence, hold up the world. We couldn’t admit how scared we were. We were terrified the banking system would fail.” Kashkari ended up working 20-hour days, crashing on his office couch, and ballooning to more than 200 pounds. Finally, in May, with the banks stabilized, he quit and moved with his wife to the Tahoe National Forest. There, he chops wood, ponders the future, and regains his sanity. “It’s detox of a tough period,” he says.
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