The competition's stiff, because inevitably a new president will wind up appointing a number of stiffs to important jobs. But here are four losers who currently lead the list of President Barack Obama's worst hires:

Larry Summers: Head of Obama's National Economic Council, Summers was a key figure during the Clinton Era in the dismantling of the Glass-Steagall Act. A stalwart friend of big banks, the former Harvard prexy is said to be very smart. So are a lot of schnooks.

Steve Rattner: Head of Obama's auto task force, the investment banker gets this appraisal from a fresh Wall Street Journal story: "No one has played a more central or contentious role in the auto bailout." Rattner's also an investor in Cerberus, the hedge fund that used to operate Chrysler. Not much of a conflict of interest there. Rattner's also the founder of Quadrangle, one of the hedge funds caught up in the pension-fund scandal.

Tim Roemer: Obama's new ambassador to India is a raving anti-environmentalist cloaked as a "moderate Democrat." He's a "distinguished scholar" at the Mercatus Center, the most hardline and notorious anti-environmentalist and anti-regulation agitprop mill in D.C. Mercatus was the Bush White House's chief engineer in rolling back health, safety, and other regulations — kind of the Anti-EPA, if you will.

Tim Geithner: The Treasury Secretary was head of the New York Fed during last year's meltdown and somewhat astoundingly was hired by Obama. No Republican president could have appointed a Treasury secretary friendlier to Wall Street's investment bankers than Geithner. Check out Geithner's inner circle and you have to wonder how he wound up in Obama's.