The hearings on the financial crisis are getting underway, but what good will it really do? Will regulation fix the system, or do we need to radically rethink it? We ask Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved and the new The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy, Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation and of the book Meltdown, and Daniel Gross, Newsweek columnist. Join us live on the Web at 12:30!

In case you haven’t noticed, it looks like there are three women lining up to run for New York’s senate seat. Oh yeah, and some guy might be thinking about it.

Editor of The Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel (can I call you Kat?) posted her outlook for 2010, and walks us down memory lane of past lefty upheavals, pausing particularly on the failure of Bill Clinton to pass health care reform.

[T]here is an orchestrated, active, full-court press to discredit and silence anyone who tries to point out the responsibility the president bears for crafting this bill. I’m surprised that the editor of the Nation would take part in it.

The year is almost over, and it’s certainly been an eventful one. We’ve seen a new president, some huge bank bailouts, a dramatic election season and we’re closer than we’ve ever been to national health care reform–whether that’s a good thing or not.

It’s also about to be 2010 and the end of a decade that Time magazine suggested might’ve been the worst ever. Hyperbole? We’ll discuss the year that was and the decade that was with a roundtable of our favorite guests, including Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation, Mark Green of Air America, Danny Schechter of News Dissector, Max Blumenthal, author of Republican Gomorrah, Maya Wiley of the Center for Social Inclusion, Faye Wattleton of the Center for the Advancement of Women, and Nancy Giles of CBS News Sunday Morning.