Yesterday the giant bond fund Pimco reported that it has surpassed $1 trillion in assets under management. The Reuters writeup mentions that the firm’s managers are “pushing to deepen the firm’s products and services beyond fixed income, Pimco’s bread and butter.” One of the experts they hired for that purpose is Neel Kashkari, who readers might remember as the Rush (the band)-lovin’ “Bailout Czar” tapped by Bush and Treasury secretary Henry Paulson to oversee the implementation of the $700 billion TARP. He worked in that role, overseeing various efforts to use TARP to purchase distressed assets and purchase equity in banks, until his spectacular burnout and retreat into the woods of California.

If you have a few hundred billion you are thinking about pushing into equities, there’s no doubt that Kashkari’s your guy.