Former NASA engineer and Goldman Sachs executive, Neel Kashkari, who is currently US treasury assistant secretary for international affairs, has been appointed as the interim head of  the new Office of Financial Stability to oversee the US Congress-approved $700-billion bailout programme to assist distressed banks (See:US Senate bails out markets – passes $700-billion package) 

A naturalised American with origins in  Jammu and Kashmir, Kashkari is said to be a key adviser on whom treasury secretary Henry Paulson relied during the financial crisis. Paulson, a former Goldman Sachs CEO had brought Kashkari from the investment bank into the treasury in July 2006 as an advisor.

According to the The Wall Street Journal, Kashkari's main task will be oversee the US treasury's plans to buy distressed assets from financial institutions.

Kashkari is reported to have been one of the originators of the bailout plan and was part of the treasury team that negotiated with the US Congress to approve the trasury department's asset-repurchase programme.

In his current assignment Kashkari will now be expected to oversee key decisions on the operation of the rescue programme.

Congress has given treasury the authority to start buying assets, but choices like which asset managers to hire, which securities to purchase and how, still remain, the newspaper said.

He will now be in charge of investment decisions involving hundreds of billions of dollars of bad mortgage assets that have affected the liquidity of several of America's largest banks.

Born in Akron, Ohio, the 35-year-old Kashkari acquired a bachelor's and master's degree in engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and started his career as an aerospace engineer and worked on developing technology for NASA before earning an MBA in finance from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

He was with Goldman Sachs Group Inc as a vice president prior to his tenure with the US Treasury.