Ben Bernanke let CBS's Scott Pelley inside the Federal Reserve for last night's interview on 60 Minutes , and the Fed Chair let Pelley in on his thinking about where the US economy is headed. Pelley's first question: "When does it all end?," to which Bernanke replied: "It depends a lot on the financial system," he replied. "The lesson of history is that you do not get a sustained economic recovery as long as the financial system is in crisis. We've seen some progress in the financial markets, absolutely. But until we get that stabilized and working normally, we're not gonna see recovery. But we do have a plan. We're working on it. And I do think that we will get it stabilized, and we'll see the recession coming to an end probably this year. We'll see recovery beginning next year. And it will pick up steam over time." Bernanke thinks that the Fed's and the federal government's actions steered us away from a new depression. But that doesn't mean he doesn't continue to have mixed feelings about some of the bailout action. He once again told of his anger at the rescue of AIG--a popular topic this weekend as the global insurance company was to give out hundreds of millions dollars of bonuses to top executives even as it was going back to the government for more billions in bailout dollars. Bernanke told Pelley it was "absolutely unfair that taxpayer dollars are going to prop up" AIG when it was "operating out of sight of regulators" and making dubious, "terrible bets." But he said it had to be done in order to save the US economy. And he explained the thinking in preventing Wal Street collapses for the good of the whole country: "Let me give you an analogy, if I might," Bernanke said. "If you have a neighbor, who smokes in bed. And he's a risk to everybody. If suppose he sets fire to his house, and you might say to yourself, you know, 'I'm not gonna call the fire department. Let his house burn down. It's fine with me.' But then, of course, but what if your house is made of wood? And it's right next door to his house? What if the whole town is made of wood? Well, I think we'd all agree that the right thing to do is put out that fire first, and then say, 'What punishment is appropriate? How should we change the fire code? What needs to be done to make sure this doesn't happen in the future? How can we fire proof our houses?' That's where we are now. We have a fire going on." Here's an excerpt from the interview. Watch the full interview, and read a transcript of the interview here .