What kind of skills might be essential for someone to be head of a Federal Reserve Regional Bank? If your response is a basic knowledge of monetary policy and a deep understanding of financial markets you are mistaken: The answer is, apparently, experience at Goldman Sachs. The appointment of former Goldman Sachs vice president and Treasury official Neel Kashkari to be president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank means that the last three central bank presidents have come from Goldman.

I’ve never worked for an investment bank so perhaps I’m being unfair, but the day-to-day activities of most people at Goldman have relatively little to do with central bank operations. A regional Central Bank president has two main tasks: to run a bureaucracy tasked with monitoring the region’s economy and its member banks, and to serve on the Federal Open Market Committee, which helps determine the Fed’s monetary policy.