Ben Bernanke, our savior?

I guess I am not terribly impressed with our Federal Reserve chairman. Here are several questions.

What has he been right on, so far? Every decision he's made in the last three years has not had the effect he has claimed. The sole mention I can find showing his prowess is that he predicted in 2006 the economy would be worse than Wall Street analysts had predicted.

He has written on the Great Depression and what the Fed did wrong. He claims, as had prior monetarists, that it lasted longer than it had to have, because the Fed contracted the money supply and his "new" point is about the private banking system, in that they let banks fail. So his answer to the current recession is to expand the money supply and to prop up the biggest institutions. However, there are a host of factors that are different in this day and age - and more importantly, just because something may not have worked before does NOT necessarily mean that the exact opposite WILL work.
There is evidence that some failures are necessary to allow the necessary pain (to employees, to shareholders, to would-be borrowers) to happen sooner rather than later. A protracted wind-down may not be in our best interest, if even after near continuous bailouts, some institutions still go under.

Here are questions that I would seriously like to have answered:

If the bailouts occur because some companies are "too big to fail", what exactly does that mean? Can the Fed and/or the administration give us a clear, layman's pitch on what they think would happen if they did fail?

If AIG or Citigroup failing would cause "systemic risk", why is the system that allows such risk worth saving?

What exactly are the weak points in this system and how can we adjust it so that systemic risk is no longer an issue?

Too bad there wasn't a White House email address that one could write a question to, that you'd get a reply back in one week with the answer. :-)

Regards,
Trond