In the 1980s and 1990s banks avoided lending in minority neighborhoods and Blacks and Latinos were denied mortgages at disproportionately higher rates than equally credit-worthy whites. Redlining and mortgage discrimination was the norm. It seemed those days came to an end in the 2000s, when mortgage lenders began lending eagerly to anyone they could, and instead of being accused of avoiding minority borrowers, faced accusations of predatory lending in minority communities. However, now the tide has turned once again.

It's the day before Thanksgiving, and with the nation’s unemployment rate at 9.6 percent, many Americans are facing a difficult holiday season. Lyndon Dees, a listener from Stillwater, Oklahoma, knows what tough times are like. Lyndon lost his job in August, 2009, and has yet to find a new position.

After unexpectedly strong interest from potential investors made itself apparent, formerly-bankrupt carmaker GM raised its initial price on last night's stock offering to $33/share. This morning, the auto giant helped start off the NYSE with a Comaro's horn. Selling at $33/share should potentially net GM more than $23 billion, and allow it to pay back half of the money still owed taxpayers and the Treasury Department after last year's automaker bailout.

For many years, an integral part of the American dream has involved making it to the middle class. We associate the phrase with steady, secure work, home ownership and providing for a comfortable — if not lavish — lifestyle for our family. But has middle class America fundamentally changed since the Great Recession hit? Do people that once saw themselves as solidly middle class see themselves differently now?

There's long been a growing gap between the rich and the poor in the United States, but some believe that disparity could actually cause more harm than previously thought. A group of economists, sociologists, and legal scholars are saying there may be a correlation between income inequality and financial crises. One possible link between the two, according to David A. Moss, an economic and policy historian at the Harvard Business School could be the fact that Wall Street titans wield power that, in turn, allows them to promote policies which benefit them, but not necessarily the financial system as a whole.

Having run out of money two weeks ahead of schedule, the Cash for Clunkers program officially ends at 8 p.m. tonight.  Now that it's winding down, how are car dealers and automakers going to get people to come in and buy cars without the $4500 incentive?

We speak to Bill Underriner, owner of Underriner Autos in Billings, Montana; and Mark LaNeve, vice president of sales for General Motors.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is in Beijing for a two-day visit to meet with top Chinese government officials including President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. He is there to reassure his Chinese hosts they they need not worry about the $770 billion they've invested in U.S. treasuries. China being the biggest single purchaser of U.S. treasuries. The Takeaway is joined by BBC's Quentin Somerville who is in Beijing and following this closely.

For more on Geithner's visit to China, watch the video below.

It's May, which means one thing to high school students: Prom. That's right, across the country teens are biting their nails over getting invited by the right guy, lining up the limo, picking a corsage, and, gasp!, finding the dress. And even though many parents are watching the family budgets very closely, it seems like one thing they aren’t skimping on is their kids’ big night. Christine Haughney is a reporter for The New York Times and she joins The Takeaway with her story on the magical night.

For more, read Christine Haughney's article, Florida to California, Prom Dresses Selling in the New York Times.

Historian and author Philipp Blom’s latest endeavor makes the case that the period between 1900 to 1914 in Europe was, as the title of his new book calls it, The Vertigo Years. Those tumultuous times at the start of the last century were an era that was marked by revolution and war, but was also a time where cultural and technological changes happened at an accelerated pace. Blom joins The Takeaway from Vienna, Austria for a look at how the dizzying turn of the 20th century compares to these vertiginous times.

President Obama worked to rally the country behind his economic agenda last night in a press conference that focused heavily on the budget and skimmed almost entirely over foreign policy issues. But the press conference wasn't the only way President Obama worked to get his message out yesterday. He held a smaller news meeting shortly after noon, where he called reporters to the Oval Office to talk about his efforts to revive the economy and what he hoped would come out of the G-20. He also released a video right before the press conference inviting ordinary people to go to Whitehouse.gov to submit questions that he will answer in an online town hall on the economy tomorrow.

With all of this new media and community involvement, is the traditional press conference obsolete? Joining us for a recap and some analysis are April Ryan, White House Correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks and Dan Froomkin, who writes the White House Watch blog for the Washington Post.

Have your own thoughts to add to the President's speech? Click here!

In a call to the American people, President Obama released a video asking for questions about the economy. Watch it below.

Veteran journalist Steve Coll has turned his investigative skills on the SEC’s relationship with Wall Street, the secret history of the CIA and the legacy of the Bin-Ladens. Now he is taking on a great civic feat and endeavoring to read all 407 pages of the stimulus plan. He’s been blogging as he goes, in what reads like a combination of explanatory journalism and travelogue. Steve Coll is the president of the New America Foundation and staff writer for The New Yorker. He has come up for air this morning to give us the lowdown on his journey through this colossal document.

A growing number of states are suffering double-digit unemployment rates, fueling fears that the national jobless rate could hit 10 percent by the end of the year. In January, jobless rates rose in almost every state and the District of Columbia. Two of the states that received the highest rates of unemployment were Oregon and South Carolina.

Joining The Takeaway to discuss their concerns are Ethan Lindsey, reporter for Oregon Public Broadcasting, and Noelle Phillips, an economics and business reporter for The State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina.

President Obama is pushing Congress to finalize his stimulus bill —a plan that would provide federal dollars for projects across the country. At the same time, hundreds of buildings commissioned by another U.S. President in the middle of an economic crisis are being torn down. Buildings commissioned by Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration are being demolished. Tracie Rozhon, freelance reporter for The New York Times joins us for a look at a group that has started a new national movement to save the buildings that lay at the center of the New Deal.

For more information on the fate of WPA buildings, read Tracie Rozhon's article, New Deal Architecture Faces Bulldozer in today's New York Times.

Markets finished at record lows in 2008, but perhaps more significant than the final number, is that the volume of sales has dropped. This can be seen as an indicator that consumer confidence is extremely low. Some investors got burned in the market drop and the news is filled with lost savings due to Bernard Madoff's massive financial fraud. The net result is that people aren't interested in investing right now. To discuss this loss of consumer confidence we are joined by Roger Lowenstein, a contributor to the New York Times Magazine and author of "While America Aged: How Pension Debts Ruined General Motors, Stopped the NYC Subways, Bankrupted San Diego and Loom as the Next Financial Crisis."