Has anyone wanted a job as desperately as Bill Gross wants the job of managing the $700 billion bailout fund?

Here was the founder of bond giant Pimco last week on CNBC: "We have interest in managing this giant pool of assets, and we expect to be called."

In case Hank Paulson missed that plea, Gross went to the editorial pages of Paulson's hometown paper, the Washington Post, with the most public cover letter ever written to a potential employer.

Gross followed that up with another CNBC appearance where he announced his willingness to waive his fee if he was manager of what will be the biggest distressed asset fund in the world. He also made his case to the New York Times. "We have a large and brilliant staff that can analyze and has analyzed subprime mortgages that can help the Treasury out," he said.

We get it, Gross. You want the job, even though it hasn't even been created yet.

It's not as if Gross isn't qualified. For more than a year he has been sounding alarm bells about the potential catastrophe from the subprime-mortgage crisis. He's surely profited from it too. On the day the federal government bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Gross made a cool $1.7 billion for his Pimco Total Return Fund.

But Gross would probably be better off letting those qualifications speak for themselves. He manages the largest bond fund in the country, for goodness sake. It's not as if Treasury officials have never heard of him.

Instead, by using the media to openly beg for the job, Gross is opening himself up to criticism that might not otherwise come until after he had secured the job.

Felix Salmon points out that Gross is conflicted. "He has a strong incentive to maximize, rather than minimize, the amount paid [for the assets]—especially if he doesn't get any kind of performance fee for running the fund."

Indeed, even his friends have doubts. "They should start with somebody who doesn't have a conflict," Luis Maizel, senior managing director of LM Capital Group, told the New York Times. "Bill Gross is a good friend of mine, but if you put this in Bill's hands, Pimco is going to come out great, and I don't know that the government will."

Of course, finding someone who is qualified to do this job but isn't conflicted will be a challenge. What Washington bureaucrat is prepared to figure out how to price Wall Street's most toxic assets and then turn them around for a profit, all with the scrutiny of the largest investor base possible—the American taxpaying public?

Perhaps hiring Gross as an adviser to the fund rather than the manager will be a better solution. Others are calling for Warren Buffett to step up to the job, but we have a feeling that he'd rather spend his evenings munching on Cheetos in Omaha.