Although she came in at No. 2 in the world for the second year in a row, Sheila Bair was the highest rated American on Forbes’s most recent ranking of The 100 Most Powerful Women. The head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was outpaced only by Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany. Forbes gave Bair high marks for her battles with Washington insiders over managing the financial crisis and for adjusting to the media limelight. She also was given kudos for not being afraid to mix it up with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke over who should have more power regulating the financial industry. Bair’s shop has been plenty busy this year dealing with the cleanup from last year’s meltdown. Since January, the FDIC has taken over 77 banks, triple the number that it did during all of 2008.