Looking back on this year to early March, you'll find the precise point when the U.S. stock market seemed to find its bottom. The Dow has had a tremendous rally since then, but just about everyone is concerned about what it means.

Dropping commercial real estate values is leading fears of a double-dip recession.

Does the recovery lack any real support from economic fundamentals? It is jacked-up on stimulus programs that governments will soon try to unwind– and with what consequences?

Many analysts argue that the consequence will be the dreaded double dip.

As Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Economy.com, told CNN Money this week: "If we do slide back into recession, it will be very difficult to get out."

Some economists are so concerned they want another round of stimulus early next year because the U.S. labor market is still so weak.

About two months ago, I sat down with Steve Palm of "Smart Numbers," a Real Estate analysis company. He feared that so many commercial developments and large housing projects were defaulting it all but assured a double dip sometime in the middle of 2010. It was a dire prediction that stuck with me.

Checking back with him this week, I am sorry to say that the situation from his vantage point is no better. Palm still sees "Way too much stuff coming back to the banks." "This is causing poor liquidity as the banks still cannot lend. The dollar is way too weak too."

Small regional banks continue to go under across the United States. Most of them are going down because of foreclosures on large commercial real estate ventures. Palm sees no end in sight, and fears that if unemployment keeps mounting and housing indicators start falling again, it will be ample evidence of the "W-shaped" trend that analysts say signals an imminent double dip.

The bankruptcy rate further complicates how to gauge this recovery. As unemployment drags on and home values continue to suffer, personal bankruptcies surged 9 percent in October, with a 7 percent jump in business bankruptcies. The American Bankruptcy Institute also expects total bankruptcies in 2009 to reach almost 1.5 million. That's an increase of 30 percent from last year.

Analysts say given all of these factors, the way governments unwind the current stimuli will be key in determining whether the recovery is sustainable, or whether it slides once again. How will we know? CNN Money.com has a great primer on six key indicators to watch if you're concerned as well.

How to protect our own investment portfolios in 2010 is something we should all be discussing. Stay tuned for more on World Business Today.

If you thought that lavish bonuses for the financial industry would be a welcome casualty of the current financial crisis, it is time to think again. The New York-based executive search and compensation consultancy, Options Group, put that notion to rest for us in a new report.

Watch CNN's Ali Velshi explain what underlies the return of big bonuses on Wall Street.

Options Group predicts bonuses at financial firms worldwide will increase by an average 40% this year, just months after many of these firms were teetering on the brink of disaster and begging for bailouts.

The report, released this week, says that managing directors in high-yield credit sales will see the biggest bonuses, along with those in commodity sales units. They’ve apparently had a heck of a year. In fact, it is an incredible turnaround in fortunes which came, of course, thanks to a life raft the size of Manhattan!

Still, how could it have happened so fast: A return so promptly to business and bonuses as usual? Interviewed on Monday’s edition of World Business Today, CNN’s Ali Velshi told me, “It’s unusual given the times we are in. It’s less unusual if you’ve been tracking how this market has been doing. When you look at the money these banks are making, they’ve actually made it on trading…. Buying things cheap and selling them high.”

Velshi also points out that many of the big banks making money now have paid back the taxpayer funds they borrowed, and taxpayers have made a profit on those transactions.

However, seven of the big financial firms doling out bonuses are not off the taxpayer’s hook. Their bonuses will reportedly be less handsome.

Velshi says, “Major profits have been taken at companies that have paid that money back… and they want to be free to pay their people. It’s quite a remarkable situation. You wouldn’t have thought six months ago we’d be talking about bonuses that were bigger than last year.”

Some analysts point out that financial firms will offer more in stock and defer more cash payments because of public pressure, and pressure from regulators to pay tie to long-term results rather than rewarding short term risk. That might placate those who believe excessive rewards for short-term risk helped cause the financial meltdown.

Professor Peter Morici, of the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, says, “These bonuses show Wall Street is arrogant and insensitive. These bonuses were earned by investing cheap taxpayer funds, and the profits really belong to all Americans. This entire episode is an outrage.”

The U.S. Federal Reserve is planning to review the 28 largest banks to ensure compensation is not rewarding risk; however, global leaders have tried and failed more than once in the past year to agree on what constitutes excessive risk or excessive compensation.

“You only know it,” explained Barack Obama’s pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg a few weeks ago, “Once it’s staring you in the face,” and by then, of course, it’s too late.

So what’s the message here? Let’s just get used to it? The punch bowl is full once again on Wall Street. To paraphrase the much-maligned quotation attributed in London’s Sunday Times to Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein, God’s work is being done. Phew!

So let’s just grit our teeth and pretend we haven’t learned a thing in the past year. There’s no need to wonder what’s going on now; no need to worry about what might be laying the groundwork for the next financial crisis. After all, we’ll know it, once we see it.