Breaking News: Citigroup is getting more tax breaks, and Ben Bernanke is Time’s Person of the Year. The recession's over! Not so fast. Matthew Yglesias writes:

...it demonstrates a very specific class skew—extraordinary intervention into the market place just long enough to fix the situation from the point of view of asset-owners while leaving wage-earners holding the bag.

Are we just returning to pre-recession levels, or something better--or worse?  Nicole Gelinas, fellow at the Manhattan Instituteand author of After the Fall: Saving Capitalism from Wall Street and Washington and Max Fraad Wolff of the New School join us to talk about regulation, government and private industry, and where to go from here. While the banks are shameless about taking a public handout, public housing remains stigmatized. Reinhold Martin, Columbia professor of Architecture and author of The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media, and Corporate Space, joined us in the studio for a fascinating discussion of housing, urban and rural living. Jennifer Utz, the filmmaker behind From Baghdad to Brooklyn, provided us this video report on Cole Miller, who founded a group No More Victims to support children in Iraq wounded by the war and without access to basic health care. Meanwhile, Kambale Musavuli of Friends of the Congo stopped by the studio to remind us of the situation in Congo and our responsibilities there. President Obama spoke of "seeing firsthand" what happens in Afghanistan when he visited Walter Reed. But in the latest segment from Brave New Films' Rethink Afghanistan, veterans point out that at best Obama's only seen a second or third-hand version of what they saw and dealt with every day. Bob Dylan releasing a Christmas album might have thrown some longtime fans, but even with this album Dylan's proving his social consciousness: all artist's royalties from sales of the record go to Feeding America. Hope you like his version of "Little Drummer Boy." Thanks to Progressive Change Campaign Committee for video in today's show.