I had such high hopes for Neel Kashkari, the wonky rocket scientist turned investment banker turned Treasury official who's now in charge of spending the $700 billion blank check taxpayers just wrote to Wall Street. But in watching a speech Kashkari delivered, as a mere senior policy advisor, last month at the American Enterprise Institute, I'm less encouraged. He's a bit too much of a classic geek. Watch the clip to see why:

  • He thinks the problem can be solved with more and better data.
  • He's a fan of "covered bonds," another incomprehensible financial instrument meant to replace all of the other incomprehensible financial instruments which landed us in this mess — exactly like the programmer who would rather write more code than fix his bugs.
  • He's more concerned with playing with new tools than getting the job done.