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.

Yesterday, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced the winners of a government stimulus grant called TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery). Communities around the country competed for federal money to revamp their public transit systems. A flood of entries — nearly 1,400 — were whittled down to 51 winners.

One year ago, the Obama Administration began pushing billions and billions of dollars out the door.  The federal stimulus combines tax cuts, huge chunks of federal spending and the extension of benefits in hopes of stimulating the American economy.  So how are American cities changing, and what will we remember about this massive program decades from now?

Today, the White House releases a huge amount of raw data on how and where stimulus money is being spent. We talk about the numbers we know so far, what listeners have noticed, and what we'll be looking for in the tea leaves. We're joined by WNYC reporter Andrea Bernstein, Pete Herman, a currently unemployed ironworker from Brooklyn, N.Y., and Charlie Dilbert, a construction worker from Cincinnati whose job is being paid for with stimulus money.

• Washington Takeout: Julie Mason of The Washington Examiner talks about bickering in the Republican party. 
• Business Takeout: New York Times reporter Louise Story on where the money from the second stimulus package will go. (Yes, we're likely to see a second one soon).
• Listener Takeout: Listeners react to our coverage of President Obama's being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Back in March, St. Cloud, Minnesota was excited. Vice President Joe Biden was in town to announce that the town would be receiving an influx of money from the stimulus plan. The money would be spent on much-needed infrastructure improvements and transportation projects. Now that excitement has been replaced by questions, mainly: is the stimulus money actually creating jobs in St. Cloud? Helping The Takeaway understand what’s happening on the ground are Minnesota Public Radio reporter Ambar Espinoza and The Takeaway's Political Director Andrea Bernstein.

Our friends at Pro Publica, the independent investigative organization, are tracking the stimulus in St. Cloud closely. Read their story, Primed for a Stimulus Ride, St. Cloud Wonders When the Bus Will Arrive.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has nearly finished awarding $1 billion in stimulus funds to cities and towns across the country to improve airports. Even though the agency has urged 11 of the country’s 30 busiest hubs to drastically improve safety standards on runways, that isn’t where the money went. Joining The Takeaway are two investigative reporters who have been following the stimulus money: Mike Grabell from ProPublica, The Takeaway partner in the Shovelwatch project, tracking and reporting on stimulus spending; also on the show is Sharyl Atkinson of CBS News who reported with Michael about the airports' stimulus funds.

The Obama administration has announced the appointment of a compensation czar who will regulate executive pay at seven of the largest companies getting TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) funds. He will also develop a compensation structure for 80 smaller companies. The man who is taking on that job is Kenneth Feinberg, a Washington, D.C. attorney who was in charge of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. He joins The Takeaway to tell us about his plans. (Click through to read the interview.)

The New Deal brought us the CCC, the TVA, and the WPA. All thanks to FDR. And today’s stimulus comes along with its own bumper crop of acronyms, like SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the TIGER Team. (That’s Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery, in case you didn't know.) Wall Street Journal reporter Louise Radnofsky had to read the entire stimulus bill for her job, and she started to keep track of the ever-growing list of new acronyms, some of them pretty ridiculous. She joins John and Andrea with a look how acronyms get in the way of government transparency.

Forget the fight over fuel efficiency standards. An even more controversial measure is on the horizon — the transportation reauthorization bill. It only comes up for debate every six years and could transform the way we commute and travel. Here to explain the behemoth transportation bill is Congressman Peter DeFazio, a Democrat from Eugene, Oregon.

For more on the transportation debate taking place across the country, listen to Miles O'Brien's interview, Traffic Jam: How to Reduce Congestion, on The Takeaway. Also, hear the lively debate on the fuel standards, California, Here We Come: New Fuel Standards.

By 2050, there will be 130 million more people in the country, relying on an increasingly aging and inadequate transportation system. The stimulus money is supposed to help— tens of billions of dollars are slated to revitalize states' infrastructure. But how should that money be spent in order to actually reduce congestion? Joining The Takeaway is Miles O’Brien. He's a correspondent for Blueprint America and has just finished a documentary called Road to the Future, which looks at how Denver, Portland, Ore., and New York City are rethinking transit.

Many Wall Street giants toppled during the financial crisis, but a few giants have been created. One is money manager BlackRock. BlackRock manages $1.3 trillion in assets for a range of big private clients, from hedge funds to foreign governments. But it is the company's role as a major U.S. government adviser and contractor that is now drawing scrutiny. They're involved in everything from the rescue of AIG, Bear Stearns and Citigroup to helping the Federal Reserve stimulate the housing market. Michael de la Merced, finance reporter for the New York Times, joins The Takeaway with more of the story.

For more, read Michael de la Merced's and Eric Lipton's article, In Advising U.S., BlackRock Thrives in Uncertain Times, in the New York Times.

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?

Cities around the country are shrinking their mass transit systems in the face of economic woes. Charlotte, NC, is bucking that trend, though. They are in the process of tripling the light rail in their city. Takeaway Correspondent Andrea Bernstein is just back from Charlotte and she joins The Takeaway to explain what the city is planning, why they are prioritizing transit, and how they're paying for it.

Takeaway correspondent Andrea Bernstein is in Charlotte, North Carolina, looking at how the stimulus is affecting people's lives. She spoke with the mayor, employees of the big banks headquartered there, and workers in the local textile mills to learn about how federal dollars are being spent. The Charlotte area launched its first road-building project funded by the stimulus this week. And with unemployment there at 11.4 percent, the stimulus funds should be particularly crucial.

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

ShovelWatch is a joint project of the non-profit investigative outfit ProPublica, the morning news program The Takeaway and WNYC, New York's flagship public radio station. With investigative reporting, interactive features and help from you, we're tracking the stimulus bill dollars from Congress to your community.

Follow the dollars online and tell us how the stimulus plan is playing out in your community. We're sharing your stories online and on air, and we'll continue the investigation with your help.

As part of The Takeaway's ShovelWatch project, Correspondent Andrea Bernstein is in banking capitol, Charlotte, North Carolina. Despite Wachovia's announcement that is was laying off over 500 employees in Charlotte, she found the locals there surprisingly upbeat about the economy.

In his prime time press conference last week, President Obama credited his Economic Recovery Act with the creation of 150,000 jobs. It's an astonishing number. But is this a case of some slightly fuzzy math? The Takeaway talks to Political Director Andrea Bernstein.

If you missed last week's press conference, you can see President Obama's take on job creation below:

Instead of spending his Earth day out in the wilderness, Vice President Joe Biden held an event at a bus depot in Maryland. He was announcing a plan to spend $300 million in stimulus funding for clean-fuel buses. While the money for this program was buried in the stimulus plan, Vice President Biden was seemingly excited to introduce the green mass transit program to the crowd in Maryland. The event marks the second time in one week that the Obama administration brought transit policy to the fore. We speak to Takeaway correspondent Andrea Bernstein to see "Amtrak Joe's" emerging portfolio.

If you weren't in Landover, Maryland yesterday, you can watch Vice President Biden's speech below.

Yesterday Vice President Biden announced the federal government is releasing $2.3 billion in recovery act funding for child care and vaccines. The announcement is the latest in a flurry of national and local announcements on how stimulus spending will be spent. Some states, such as Maryland, have immediately jumped on the money and started planning, spending, and even building. Other states (New York, for example) have done next to nothing with the money yet. Joining us to discuss the stimulus spending in the the states is Takeaway Correspondent Andrea Bernstein, who is watching stimulus spending for our ShovelWatch Project, and Mark Steiner, host of the Marc Steiner Show on WEAA in Baltimore.

And we're continuing our investigation of the stimulus plan on air and online. What are your elected officials telling you is coming to your area? What do you know about the projects coming to your community? Where should the stimulus money go instead? Crowdsource the stimulus plan.

It’s been six months, almost to the day, since the TARP stimulus package was put into law. Last night, the Congressional Oversight Panel charged with monitoring the use of those funds and making sure the Treasury makes the right moves to stabilize the economy and the nation’s financial sector, issued a new report spelling out how the federal government is doing. The Takeaway's Todd Zwillich is here to give us a quick overview and we are pleased to have Richard Neiman, a member of the Congressional Oversight Panel, and the New York State Superintendent of Banks, joining us in the studio.

Click through for the transcript.


For more about the COP, here is a video they just released to accompany their report called Assessing Treasury's Strategy: Six Months of TARP.