The current Treasury has so far struggled to keep up with the task of hiring enough people to handle the $700 billion financial 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.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122783187912562983.html
At least someone is hiring!
