Pick of the Day: Reporting the details

Details, what wonderful, precise details in Laura Blumenfeld’s masterful profile of Neel Kashkari, the former federal bailout chief, that appeared in The Post on Sunday.

Details: He walks on “pine-needled tracks of black bears.” The stubble on his face is “six days old.” He hasn’t changed his sweater “in three or four days.” And that’s just in the first three graphs.

When he climbs a ladder, he’s “10 rungs up.” When he moves to Washington, he orders “five rush-altered Macy’s suits.” When he calls a colleague to offer him a job, he interrupts him playing golf “on the 12th hole.” And so on.

That’s great reporting, and so was this insightful quote about how nervous he was about running the Troubled Assets Relief Program (or TARP, as it’s known), and the $700 billion that went with it: “We had to project confidence, hold up the world. We couldn’t admit how scared we were, or how uncertain.”

You think a guy who has testified before hostile congressmen is going to open up and say something like that to just anyone?