In an effort to help alleviate the symptoms of Europe's debt crisis, the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and other international banks funneled U.S. dollars into European financial systems on Wednesday. The move helped markets by making American dollars more easily available outside the U.S. Stocks shot up in reaction to the news. The increased liquidity had the immediate effect of boosting the Dow Jones industrial average by 484 points. It was the biggest single day gain since March 2009. Some wondered, however, whether the move was a smart long-term investment, or just a temporary fix.

The world leaders of the G20 are meeting later this week, and there are a lot of ideas afloat on how to reorganize world currency (gold standard, anyone?). Simon Johnson, former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund, helps us examine the notion that the U.S. dollar may not remain at the top of the heap forever.

Standing before a crowd of union members and leaders at the Milwaukee Laborfest yesterday, President Barack Obama called on Congress to pass a $50 billion public works plan that would rebuild and modernize the country's transportation systems; it's a move designed to create jobs and help jump-start the economy.

The president's critics, particularly Republicans, are calling his actions too little, too late.

Stock markets around the world seemed jittery yesterday: The Dow Jones industrials dropped briefly below 10,000 before making up most of their loss. Since a recent high in April, the Dow has dropped nearly 12 percent. What does this number indicate about our economy? Is the market the end-all-be-all measurement of how our economy is doing?

Vice President Joe Biden is in charge of implementing the White House’s $787 billion economic stimulus package. In his first quarterly accounting to President yesterday, he gave the Obama Administration an A+, saying immediate financial relief has gone out to Americans and billions of dollars has gone into job-creating projects. Is this a case of grade inflation? Here to report on the report card is Andrea Bernstein, The Takeaway’s Correspondent and Director of the Shovel Watch project. Also joining the conversation is Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and co-founder of the Baseline Scenario blog. He also writes for the Economix blog at NYTimes.com.


ShovelWatch is a joint project of the non-profit investigative outfit ProPublica, The Takeaway and WNYC. With investigative reporting, interactive features and help from you, we're tracking the stimulus bill dollars from Congress to your community.

In his recent Economix blog post, The First Fiscal Stimulus Worked. Should We Do Another?, Simon Johnson argues that we may need another stimulus package to fulfill the promises of the first. Do you agree?

The Federal Reserve yesterday released the long-awaited results of the “stress tests”. The report gave nine of the nation's largest banks a clean bill of health, and told ten others to raise $75 billion in new capital. The banks in trouble, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup, will have until June 8 to come up with a plan to raise the money and have it approved. Joining The Takeaway is Simon Johnson, Professor at MIT, former chief economist at the IMF, and co-founder of the economics blog Baseline Scenario. He's been a critic of Treasury Secretary Timonthy Geithner's approach to solving the nation's financial woes, he joins us to discuss the results, the after-hours upsurge in trading, and what this means for the economy.

Stress-test results: click here to see which banks still need more cash.

As the G-20 meets in London, one of the main issues at hand are economic reforms. A piece, The Quiet Coup, in the May issue of The Atlantic paints an unhappy picture of the U.S. economy. It claims that economic recovery in the U.S. will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And we might want to listen up because this article was written by none other than the former Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund, Simon Johnson. He joins The Takeaway to discuss the state of the American economy in the midst of this global meeting.


For more from Simon Johnson, check out his site, Baseline Scenario.

Simon Johnson hit MSNBC to discuss his article in which he states that if banks are not reigned in the U.S. could be headed for something worse than the Great Depression: