The Washington Post recently did an interesting story on Neel Kashkari, the 35-year old Bailout Chief at the US Treasury. Apparently, working 20-hour days for seven months on one of the most stressful projects in history (i.e., attempting to prevent a complete global market collapse) led Kashkari to an existential case of burnout.

Has Kashkari’s experience pushed him into the wild like Christopher McCandless? Did Kashkari step into the innermost chamber of the political/financial temple only to realize it’s all a rigged scam?

Although many people still believe our leaders know best and have everything under control, Kashkari candidly admits that when the economy seized, “We didn’t know if it would work. We had to project confidence, hold up the world. We couldn’t admit how scared we were, or how uncertain.”

But that was surely an anomaly and now we’re back to smooth sailing, right? That’s not what Kashkari thinks. He is now living in the wild because “I had to do something with my hands. It’s a big amorphous unknown — what’s going to happen to our economy. And the shed is solid, measurable. I can see it, I can touch it. It’s going to be around for the next 30 years. It’s the opposite of amorphous.”

Kashkari had the chance to play financial priest at the top of the socio-economic pyramid. However, the job seemed to be void of meaning: “As a kid I thought: How glamorous,” Kashkari says. “Well, it wasn’t very glamorous when I was sitting there.”

Kashkari’s sudden exodus is very interesting. The man flipped 180-degrees from Gordon Gekko to Henry David Thoreau. Does he simply need a vacation, or is this something deeper? Are we looking at a normal reaction to overseeing the US economy, or did Kashkari look into the heart of darkness and taste Sartre’s nausea?

I think Kashkari’s behavior speaks volumes about our civilization in 2009. What do you think?

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