TARP hangover...

Sunday's Washington Post (click here) has an interesting story about Neel Kashkari, the 35-year-old Treasury staffer who came up with TARP. How did he do it? Here's an excerpt:

In Washington, he used his BlackBerry to determine the bailout sum presented to Congress. His arithmetic: "We have $11 trillion residential mortgages, $3 trillion commercial mortgages. Total $14 trillion. Five percent of that is $700 billion. A nice round number."

Looking back, he says, he is more confident about the two-by-sixes (he's purchasing at Home Depot)

"Seven hundred billion was a number out of the air," Kashkari recalls, wheeling toward the hex nuts and the bolts. "It was a political calculus. I said, 'We don't know how much is enough. We need as much as we can get [from Congress]. What about a trillion?' 'No way,' Hank shook his head. I said, 'Okay, what about 700 billion?' We didn't know if it would work. We had to project confidence, hold up the world. We couldn't admit how scared we were, or how uncertain."

The story goes on to talk about the trials and tribulations he went through as he attempted to implement the TARP program via congress. The end result of all of his hard work over the past year--he has now retreated to a remote cabin in the Sierra Nevadas.

The story is a cautionary tale for those of us who believe we can go to Washington and actually change things.

I think it also gives those of us a fresh perspective on local government--while our work can seems overwhelming at times--we really do have the ability to effectuate positive change at the local level. This ability diminishes as you attempt to accomplish tasks at the upper branches of government.