The Chicago Sun Times reports:

State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias acknowledged Wednesday that his family bank, the Broadway Bank, will probably fail.

But Giannoulias strongly denied he ever engaged in “reckless” or “risky” loan-making when he served as chief loan officer for his family’s now-struggling Broadway Bank. Giannoulias ran for state treasurer four years ago touting his know-how as a bank executive.

Well, it gets better — or worse, depending on your perspective:

Giannoulias denied having any role in getting his former campaign policy director in 2006, Brent Adams, his current post as Acting Secretary of Financial and Professional Regulation for the state of Illinois, which has jurisdiction over Broadway Bank. …

He strongly denied the family was irresponsible for taking $69 million out of the bank just before the real estate collapse that he said they did not see coming.

“In 2007, if we knew the market was going to go sour, we would have stopped making loans,” Giannoulias said. “The bank was appraised in 2006 or 2007 for $300 million, so they could have sold the bank, even if just for $200 million.”

Giannoulias defended his use of “brokered deposits” — under his tenure they became 68 percent of the bank’s deposits compared to the industry standard of four percent — saying Broadway did not have a lot of branches and ATMs to bring in deposits.

And what about his bank’s Mob clients? Ah, those would be “‘a few colorful characters’ — convicted bookmaker Michael Giorango, Russian mobsters Boris and Lev Stratievsky, and convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko — [who] were not representative of his portfolio. Giannoulias denied, even though he went down to Florida to inspect the properties, that he was aware of Giorango’s mob ties.”

Really, what were the Democrats thinking when they nominated him? Well, the lieutenant-governor nominee already stepped down after his domestic-violence issue came to light. So I’m not convinced that Giannoulias is going to make it all the way to November. Frankly, if there isn’t a Frank-Lautenberg-for-Robert-Torricelli game plan in the works, I think that seat is a goner for the Democrats. After all, they don’t want to fall behind (jump ahead of?) New York in the most-embarrassing-political-culture race, do they?