Hank Paulson has appointed Neel Kashkari, a protégé from his days as chief of Goldman Sachs, to run the US government's plan to purchase troubled assets from financial institutions.

Mr Kashkari is one of the US Treasury secretary's closest policy advisers, taking a lead role in developing the department's response to the housing crisis and then emerging as a point-person on the $700bn (€518bn, £402bn) bail-out.