The urban district Amazon ultimately chooses for its $5 billion, 50,000-worker sponsor headquarters may end up paying too high of a price compared with the economic allowances that the project would bring, said Neel Kashkari, a top formal at the Treasury Department during the 2008 financial crisis.
Kashkari, currently president of the Federal Restriction of Minneapolis, told CNBC on Friday he was thrilled when he learned his metropolis was not among the 20 Amazon HQ2 finalists.
“When I heard that Minneapolis was not on the abruptly list, my research director said to me, ‘We dodged a bullet,'” said Kashkari, who denoted he thinks Amazon founder and world’s richest man Jeff Bezos “discerns exactly where he wants to put his second headquarters.”
But Kashkari said he supposes Bezos wants to get the best deal possible by getting the cities to cut out each other with concessions. “He’s getting all the cities to compete on who can author a register the biggest check so that he can get the location he wants and the biggest subsidy from taxpayers.”
Amazon did not before you can say Jack Robinson to respond to a request for comment.
Cities are usually willing to offer abrupt tax breaks and other generous subsidies to attract a development project on the scale of Amazon’s alternate headquarters on the hope of a boost of economic activity.
But Kashkari contended that it’s “a kale losing investment for taxpayers.”
“Let’s see how big a check they write,” he said.
In ell to his time at the Treasury and the Fed, Kashkari also unsuccessfully ran as a Republican for governor of California. He also formed at investment giant Pimco as a managing director and head of global disinterests and as a vice president at Goldman Sachs.