bureau chief david leonhardt. a pleasure to have you on the program.e been doing incredibly informative reporting in the new york times i want to focus on. there's a chart that you had in a recent article that showed the effects of tax cuts on economic growth over the last 40 years, 30 years. and its a downward slope. tell us a little bit more about that and the great republican hypothesis that slashing taxes leads to economic growth here in the united states. >> yes, as i mentioned in the column, i brought a version of that chart to see paul ryan a year or so ago when hes and a member of congress and, like a lot of journalists i spoke to him regularly about economic pr policy and said, how do you square this chart with the idea tax cuts are the most important factor in creating economic growth? you don't need a chart, think about the last 20 years or so. h.w. bush first, then bill clinton raised taxes, all of these predictions of doom, instead we had the '90s boom and george w. bush cut taxes and there were predictions of prosperity and instead we had

to help break this down we turn to david leonhardt, washington bureau chief for the "new york times." he writes frequently on economics. and, david, thank you for joining us. give us the big picture here. what's the big picture you took from this report in terms of the economic situation for average american families. >> well, the situation is not good. what we've had, essentially, over the last now more than a decade, is we had a really mediocre, disappointing economic expansion last decade. and then we had a terrible crisis that more than erased the gains that people had made, and that explanation why, as you said, income is back down to its level of the mid- to late 1990s, and the poverty rate is relatively high. >> warner: which do you find more ominous, that the median household income fell or that, even though more people are working, the average wage also fell? >> well, we've had a little bit of a change. in the early part of this last few years, in the recession itself, we had huge job loss. but we also for people working, still had wages going up more quickly than inflation,

. >> thank you to david leonhardt of "the new york times." great to have you onthe program.erybody should be checking out your reporting and making t shirts with those graphs to mind themselves the reities of tax ts. six hopes to stop taxmagedon. ally bank. whthey'relways ere to tal i love you, james. don't you love me? i'm a robot. i know. i know you're a robot! but there's more in you than just circuits and wires! uhhh (cries) mae'veyoaterca that's why ally has knowledgeable people there for you, night and day. ally bank. your money needs an ally. who have used androgel 1%, there's big news. seg og.6 both are used to treat men with low testosterone. androgel 1.62% is from the makers of the number one prescribed testosterone replacement therapy. it raises your testosterone levels, and... is concentrad, so you could use less gel. and with androgel 1.62%, you can save on your monthly prescription. [ male announcer ] dosing and application sites between these products differ. women and children should avoid contact with application sites. discontinue androgel and call your doc

joining me from washington david leonhardt, washington bureau chief of the "new york times". in 2011 he won a pulitzer prize for his columns on the u.s. economy. i'm pleased to have him back on this program. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: so what might the fed do and what consequences might happen? >> well, the fed is now talking about doing a version of something it has already done a couple timesment people may have heard the phrase q e3 to refer to what this is n technical terms that is quantitative easing 3. let's skip the technical terms, in essence it would buy up assets. in the course of buying up assets it would try to reduce long-term interest rates. short trem interest rates are already essentially at zero, the fed moves them down during the crisis but because the economy continues to be so weak, what they're trying to do here is to give it a little bit of an extra nudge. and your question is really important one, which is what kind of an effect would it have. i think the sort of best guess is that it would have something greater than 0, but only a moderate effect.

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