Obama's New Commerce Secretary Used to Run a Failed Bank

Did you lose your bank due to bad subprime loans? Then you too can run the Commerce Department:

CNN, quoting "multiple sources," is reporting this evening that Penny Pritzker is the top choice of President-elect Barack Obama to become his secretary of Commerce.

The 49-year-old billionaire was national finance chair of Obama's record-breaking presidential campaign that raised in the neighborhood of $640 million. ...

As The Ticket reported recently, Pritzker donated $37,300 to various Obama fundraising accounts this cycle and was named a member of his Transition Economic Advisory Board.

She is an heir of the Pritzker family of Chicago that founded the Hyatt chain of hotels. Her brother, Jay Robert "J.B." Pritzker, was a national finance chair for Obama's New York rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, and is listed among the top 150 richest Americans.

Penny Pritzker is currently chairwoman of Classic Residence by Hyatt and is listed as among the wealthiest 140 Americans, with an estimated fortune of nearly $3 billion.

If she is Obama's choice to run the Commerce Department, Pritzker is likely to undergo some questioning during Senate confirmation hearings about her role as onetime chairwoman of Chicago's Superior Bank, which went under due to a significant number of the kind of subprime loans that Obama so often denounced on the campaign trail this year.

The Obama cabinet is turning into a real rogues gallery.

In addition to Pritzker and Eric Holder at Attorney General, we'll have an open borders advocate in Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano heading up Homeland Security.

Feel safer?

UPDATE: Fox News reports that Pritzker is withdrawing from consideration. I guess the whole sub-prime thing proved to be too much of a problem.