U.S. Rescue Plan Under Staff Strain

[DogPoundPup]

Source: Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON -- President-elect Barack Obama made his most important Treasury Department personnel choice, but Timothy Geithner has big personnel challenges of his own.

The current U.S. Treasury has so far struggled to keep up with the task of hiring enough people to handle the $700 billion financial-markets rescue package passed by Congress in October. The man now in charge of running the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Assistant Secretary Neel Kashkari, said the department's Office of Financial Stability, with about 40 full-time employees, is operating at half-staff.

Federal banking regulators, who must approve the applications from banks before they go to Treasury, said there is a backlog of unprocessed applications for relief. Outside observers said the difficulty of quickly building a qualified staff may be one reason the Treasury abandoned its original plans to use the TARP to purchase assets from financial institutions, deciding instead to inject capital into the banking system.

"I don't think that was a small part of why Treasury in the end abandoned the asset-purchase program. It's very people intensive," said Wayne Abernathy, executive vice president of financial-institutions policy and regulatory affairs at the American Bankers Association.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122758245991355751.html

[elleng]

1. Looking for a job?

!

[Triana]

2. And this wasn't recognized before they proposed the program - why?

If it's 'people-intensive' - what nincompoop DID NOT realize that when the program was proposed and approved? Duh.

[BumRushDaShow]

3. I expect there are alot of unemployed Wall St. types who look at gov't salaries with disdain

It'll take awhile but they may come around. ;)