He's about to be given an awesome amount of financial power, according to emerging reports
I worked with him when he was a journeyman engineer at TRW about 10 years ago (see reference in his official treasury bio). He struck me as a talented and capable journeyman engineer, but he did not impress me as unusually brilliant compared to his peers at TRW (now Northrop Grumman Space technology).
Since that time it he has gotten an MBA, worked 4 years at Goldman Sachs and 2 years in the federal government.
He got an MBA from the Wharton School in 2002
He worked at Goldman Sachs for four years after graduating Wharton and before following Paulson to Treasury (hometown article denotes going to Goldman after graduating Wharton), a move he made in June 2006.
He donated $2000 to George Bush on 10/13/03
He was named Assistant Secretary of Treasury (International Affairs) on November 15, 2007.
I cannot appropriately judge where he is now based on interactions ten years ago, but he has remarkably limited experience to be fulfilling such a role, and while he is intelligent, I did not see the level of genius ten years ago that might be required to compensate for such limited experience.
I hope that he will get the appropriate level of vetting to make sure that he can be trusted with such a significant position. My concerns are not assuaged by the fact that the position is "interim" between now and January - how many tens of billions (or hundreds of billions) of dollars will be committed during this interim period?