Brad DeLong admits today that he was wrong to ever doubt Ben Bernanke. He had speculated in the past that Bernanke wouldn't be able to survive the financial crisis with his reputation intact. Too many decisions made too quickly would surely ruin the Fed chair, he had thought. But, alas, in light of what he calls "incoherent" complaints about Bernanke, he concludes that there's not enough opposition to prevent him from securing a second term. While it seems that Brad is betting on Ben, he takes the opportunity to make a shout-out—last names omitted because they're good friends—to the rest of those who could do the job well too: "Larry (or Janet, or Roger, or Allen, or Christy.)"

Let it be said that Paul Krugman is both influential and adorable. After Mediaite—Dan Abrams' new pet project—ranked him as the No. 1 most influential columnist in America, he said only, "the less said about #1, the better. ..." In all seriousness, though, his post does raise one or two questions about the media and the culture of "rankings." How did Mark Bittman, NYT food blogger, outrank Arianna Huffington? (Full disclosure, I am a Bittman fan and if you don't subscribe to his podcast, you should consider it.) Not to imply that food writers are inherently less influential than political wonks—I'm the last person who would suggest this—but the ranking does seem a tad bizarre. Especially when you consider that Christopher Hitchens was ranked No. 5. In the words of Krugman: "Why would God allow that?"

Barry Ritholtz shows no signs of slowing his media blitz, with appearances on both MSNBC's Morning Meeting and (shudder) Glenn Beck's show today. Ritholtz also pointed out that his book snagged a nice mention in the NYT "Freakonimcs" blog. Congrats, Barry! And conspiracy theorists, don't despair—Ritholtz has you covered. Apparently there's loose evidence of some sneaky trading over at Goldman Sachs.

Felix Salmon pointed out the inequitable distribution of transit stimulus funds between cities and rural areas—and quite rightly—in this post on "urban underfunding." While $26.6 billion in stimulus funds was earmarked for use in transit projects, states were left to distribute the funds of their volition. The result? "Seattle, for instance, got none of the first tranche of federal stimulus funds; Charlotte got less than 2% of North Carolina's," said Salmon. Salmon then went on to (jokingly) suggest a kind of city political movement—"an Urbanist Party," he called it—to combat such inequities. This seems like a good idea until dear Salmon puts his foot in his mouth, referring to city-dwellers as "the people who really make any modern economy run." Of course, that argument would make more sense if Lehman (LBC), Morgan Stanley (MS), and AIG (AIG) had all been located in rural Idaho during our economic collapse.